the Social Orchards project; expanding planting publicly-accessible fruit - the urban orchard living environment

For the past eighteen months or so, Social Orchards have planting publicly-accessible fruit trees and bushes in community spaces including parks, churches, schools etc etc. I have been aware for some time that I ought to seek assistance and more ideas in how to access new sites, obtain more funding and engage more of the public. Below is an introductory letter that I have been using;

I’m contacting you on behalf of Social Orchards – we’re trying to help fill South London with fruit trees! Our campaign is to create a network of mini orchards and forest gardens across any spare patch of land i.e. free food in public spaces, community food-growing areas and foraging trails.

Currently we're planting up trees across our neighbourhood in Sutton (local church, school, community centre, some couple acres of redundant land by railway) and creating flat level access onto the main orchard site behind BedZED. Soon we hope to add more planting into the orchard to add more layers of the “forest garden” and continue planting up along the Wandle Valley Trail, and beyond across London – is this something you’d be keen to help us with?

There are so many benefits of planting widespread fruit trees across our neighbourhoods. :-)
- It's free and nutritious food.
- Great for pollination and wildlife habitat.
- You get good exercise and swap skills.
- Good for the environment as trees make oxygen and absorb carbon.
- Shade from sunshine and shelter from wind, slows rainwater and eases flow of water into soil.
- Builds community (you might meet your neighbours - you decide if that's a good thing!)
- Lots of pretty blossom!
With the worms pulling dead plant matter into the soil and wildflowers sending down deeper roots, the orchard will become more drought-resistant and support broader biodiversity, as well as locking away carbon into the soil, assisting percolation of rainwater into the ground and the trees themselves act as a delaying buffer to slow sudden downpours getting to the ground (which reduces flooding).

Benefits of a forest garden
• Health and exercise - improve mental wellbeing and physical mobility, improving strength and coordination at individual’s pace
• Free healthy nutritious food
• Gateway for Wandle Valley Regional Park - raises profile
• Inclusive activity delivering community cohesion - mixing of population demographics, intergenerational and socio-economic and ability

Objectives
• Physical improvement of an open space
• Protecting or improving biodiversity
• Promoting physical activity
• Improving wellbeing
• Increasing community safety
• Mitigating or adapting to climate change
• Improving access to open spaces by under-represented groups

There has been a long slow laborious journey in getting to where we are now, particularly with gaining relevant documentation, insurances and permissions. We had been successful with a grant application to get £10k funding and although the project has been time-consuming for us to manage as volunteers, we’re now picking up speed and our enthusiasm is building as we look for more planting sites and searching for further funding.

We have been growing links with the local community and engaging with a variety of organisations including local school and special needs college, church and two community centres. We have other interested parties and more sites awaiting funding. We are adding to orchard planting conducted by other organisations at local park (HLF project with park friends group, 77 trees in restoration of Victorian garden) and railway station (Hackbridge Transition Action Group).

We have been making links with relevant local organisations to partner up with, including Sutton Community Farm, Mitcham Community Orchard, Wandle Valley Regional Park Trust, Hackbridge Neighbourhood Development Group alongside many others. Further links to various appropriate bodies are on our to-do list such as The Orchard Project, National Forest Garden Initiative, Capital Growth, London National Park City etc.