Tower and Town, November 2024(view the full edition)      Natture Notes: From 'The Heavenly Mountains' To 'Little Avebury'The Avebury Community Orchard group has been gathering apples from our orchard and around the village for pressing and bottling. The juice is selling well in the Community Shop. One variety merited a separate pressing. A 100+ year old tree in a village garden was found after DNA testing to have no match - an Avebury wilding. Designated 'a new variety', it now appears in a catalogue of rare fruit trees. Its juice is sweet and delicious. A young tree grown from a graft now sits in the Churchyard. Searching for a name, we found a V&A painting entitled: "Mending the Thatch on a Cottage in Little Avebury". We named our new variety: 'Little Avebury'. Why Community Orchards? Our domesticated apples derive from Malus sieversii, which originally journeyed here 5,000 miles along the Silk Road from the 24,000-foot Heavenly Mountains dividing China from Kazakhstan. Later, the Norman French arrived in Britain bringing their orchard tradition, and orchards became a significant feature across the land - a treasury of genetic diversity, a rich repository of culture. Since 1950, most English orchards have disappeared (95% from Wiltshire). Supermarkets offer a limited choice - 6 varieties maybe. A specialist nursery holds over 600. Happily, renewed interest in local fruit trees has encouraged the rise in community orchards, helping to conserve local varieties and provide for the wildlife dependent upon them. Partly inspired by Marlborough's example and as a lasting celebration of the late Queen's Diamond Jubilee, Avebury Community Orchard began in 2012 - with plantings of Wiltshire apple varieties in The Shop garden and on the Sportsfield, many with great names and stories behind them: Wiltshire Monster, Roundway Magnum Bonum, Mary Barnett, Julia's Late Golden, Dredge's Fame and, our latest addition, Wiltshire Dognose. Alongside the Sportsfield trees, we have restored a hedge with wildlife-friendly species, giving the community the opportunity to learn traditional hedge-laying under expert tutelage from villager, Fred Gillam (fred@thewildsideoflife.co.uk). A map of fruit trees around Avebury reveals 'a village within an orchard' - like Marlborough but smaller. An Avebury Chapel display highlights the hard work and fun of orchard activities: our National Apple Day celebrations, pressings, cider-making, memorial tree plantings, hedging and the next event in the Apple calendar - the Wassail. Come join us by The Red Lion pub on Saturday 11th January at 1.00pm as we process through Avebury led by Spanker, the Wassail horse, and Mummers, to bless fruit trees and farmland for the coming year. Diana Gater and Janet Polack (guest correspondents) |