We aim to revive orchards for health in a hospital setting. From now until March 2025, we have 2,000 fully funded fruit trees available. They are going fast, so submit an expression of interest now!
After falling out of fashion, orchards are once again being recognised as invaluable community spaces. In busy and stressful environments they can informally enhance health and wellbeing or be used as a space for more structured nature-based interventions throughout the year. In this blog, we suggest how to engage staff and patients with making the most of orchards for health.
Orchards provide immense social value to hospitals. Historically, they were a common feature in institutions such as convents, monasteries, stately homes, and hospitals. In the Victorian era, orchards in mental health hospitals played a crucial role in food provision, recovery and skill learning. The NHS Forest project has worked with Langdon Hospital and Bethlem Hospital, both of which have veteran orchards now being used therapeutically.
Orchards provide a space for events in all seasons, bringing people together and fostering a sense of community. These events can be open to staff and patients or can provide a way to reach out to the wider community. Traditional orchards connect people with heritage, promote healthy eating and offer unique events. In addition, they are a way to encourage biodiversity and keep rare fruit variteties alive. The seasonal calendar associated with orchards includes cultural events and ideas to engage both staff and patients:
Orchards for Health Seasonal Calendar
A PDF version is available to download.
Winter
Planting day. Make an event of it! Tree planting is an especially social and positive day out. Make sure to make a map of where all the different varieties get planted! You can be very creative with how you map your orchard and label your trees.
Quarterly Tree Checks. Take time to woodchip mulch and weed, check the stakes, ties and guards. Do this as part of a planting day or make it a special event – the more the merrier!
Pruning Workshops. Your apple, pear and quince trees are pruned in the winter. In fact this applies to all trees which fall into the ‘malus’ family. You could offer classes on winter pruning techniques to prepare the trees for the next growing season.
Wassail. This annual event takes place sometime after Christmas and before late January. This is an ancient tradition in which people visit orchards and sing around the trees to ask for a good harvest. It’s a great opportunity to have a community event in January, an otherwise quiet month. You could make this event part of your planting day.
Indoor Gardening Workshops. Start seedlings indoors in late winter, focusing on plants that can be transferred to the orchard in late spring.
Winter Wildlife Watching. Set up feeding stations and provide binoculars for patients to observe winter wildlife from indoors or during short outings.
Wildlife Habitat Building. Engage participants in building birdhouses, bat boxes and other habitats to support orchard wildlife before spring arrives!
Spring
Quarterly Tree Checks. Top up woodchip mulch and weed trees. The trees may need watering between March and October, especially if it’s been dry. Bear in mind that young trees need 10-20 litres per week.
Blossom Day. Organise a Blossom Day event in April-May. Have tea and cake and observe the flowers. Blossom day is based on the Japanese festival of celebrating cherry blossoms.
Blossom Art Therapy. Facilitate painting and drawing sessions in the orchard to capture the beauty of the blossoms.
Mindfulness Walks. Conduct guided mindfulness walks focusing on the sights, sounds, and scents of the blooming orchard.
Pollinator Workshops. Host workshops on the importance of pollinators and how to attract them, including building bee hotels and planting wildflowers.
Set Up Wildlife Cameras. Bring the outside in for patients who struggle to get outside. Give patients the opportunity to watch the birds fledge their nests or other wildlife!
Summer
Plan your tree planting. Think about any planting you would like to do over the winter and put your orders in with NHS Forest early to ensure you receive the varieties you want.
Do your quarterly tree checks. Top up woodchip mulch and weed trees. The trees may need watering between March and October, especially if it’s been dry. Bear in mind young trees need 10-20 litres per week.
Summer solstice picnic. Celebrate the longest day of the year.
Bioblitz. A bioblitz is a community effort to record as many species as possible in a particular location and over a set period of time. Try surveying which species are present in your orchard. You could survey the meadow flowers, especially if you rewild under the fruit trees. This is an ideal habitat for much-needed pollinators.
Gardening Workshops. Offer classes on orchard maintenance, pruning and organic pest control.
Mindfulness in the orchard. Examples include forest bathing, gentle yoga or tai chi classes under the shade of the fruit trees.
Nature Walks and Educational Tours. Conduct guided tours focusing on the wildlife and plant species in the orchard.
Nature Journaling. Encourage patients to keep nature journals, documenting their observations and reflections in the orchard.
Pruning workshops. Your fruit trees with stones like cherries and plums, known as ‘prunus’ varieties, should be pruned in the summer months.
Autumn
Order Trees. If you’re planning any more fruit tree planting, make sure to get your orders with us in as soon as possible. Nurseries often run out of fruit trees before the season’s over.
Tree Checks. Top up woodchip mulch and weed trees, check the stakes, ties, guards.
Make Compost Bays. At this time of year, leaves are falling. Talk to your Estates team about collecting this leaf litter in a secluded area to make leaf mulch! This organic matter is incredibly beneficial as mulch to add to your trees in the winter.
Annual Meadow Cut. Leaving the grass and meadow flowers uncut until the autumn means the plants, and the insects that depend on them, have completed their full life cycle. However, come late September it’s time for the annual cut.
Bulb planting. September-November is the ideal time to plant out bulbs for the following spring.
Apple Day. This celebration of apples is on 21st October. This an opportunity to run community events such as harvesting, preserving and storing fruit, apple bobbing, apple identification workshops and juice pressing!
Storytelling Events. Host storytelling sessions in the orchard, where patients can share personal stories or listen to folktales.
Harvest Crafts. Provide materials for making crafts with harvested items such as dried fruit garlands or leaf collages.
Orchard Open Day. Invite the community to visit the orchard, learn about its history and participate in activities
Like all trees, fruit trees will provide ecosystem services, this includes their positive contribution to water quality, air filtration and carbon sequestration value. But, did you know traditional orchards are priority habitats? They support nationally rare and scarce species. To learn more, read our blog Nurturing Nature: orchards, biodiversity and hope.
Want to learn a bit more about orchards for health?
We are offering two online webinars delivered by The Orchard Project, the national charity dedicated to creating, maintaining and celebrating community orchards.
The Orchard Project’s aim is for everyone in cities across the UK to be within walking distance of a productive, well-cared-for, community-run orchard. They believe that orchards have the potential to build stronger communities by providing cherished, nature-rich community food spaces and empowering people to make positive change where they live. The charity works closely with community groups in hubs around England, Scotland and Wales helping to design and create new orchards that will last for decades to come, as well as restoring old, neglected heritage orchards. They rebuild orcharding skills and knowledge, hold fantastic orchard celebration events, and help groups make the most of their harvests.
These orchards for health webinars are essential for applicants applying for fruit trees from us, but open to anyone who works within healthcare who wants to learn the basics of orchard design and maintenance.
These free-of-charge webinars will take place online using Microsoft Teams and can be booked via TicketTailor.
Webinar 1: Plan and create an orchard at your NHS site (18th September)
How to choose the best location for the orchard, select the fruit trees, design the layout of the orchard and plant the trees.
Webinar 2: How to look after the Orchard at your NHS site (25th September)
How to look after the fruit trees in the first few years, including mulching, formative pruning and dealing with common pests and diseases.
If you wish to order fruit trees from us, please complete the expression of interest form.