Recently, our Derwent Living Forest team have been supporting some fantastic community projects including Heartwood Social Farming Centre near to Matlock. They invite groups to their farm to engage in heritage crafts, farm activities and wildlife restoration actions. To support their projects and improve biodiversity on their land, they wanted to create an orchard and plant woodland strips- some to coppice for use in their activities. It was a great opportunity to also work with Action for Conservation (AFC) who were the lead partner on this project. AFC work with young people to inspire them to take action for, and protect, the environment.

We were very happy to help at the tree planting day, as were many young people including members of the AFC Youth Leadership Group and our Junior Rangers from Derbyshire Wildlife Trust (DWT). Despite the chilly weather, they arrived with lots of energy and high spirits which kept us all going throughout the day.

After warming up with a hot drink we got to work, tools in hand we set off down the field to plant the orchard trees. After some demonstrations from George and Charlotte from DWT, we paired up and got planting the 35 fruit trees which included a variety of apples, pears and plums. Planting trees is a great teamwork activity – and as you’ll see in the photos below – teamwork was essential when knocking in the stakes with the post knocker!

By lunch we had worked up an appetite and were lucky enough to all be provided with a hot lunch in the barn, build your own burritos – such a treat and excellent fuel for planting more trees in the afternoon. Thanks to AFC for organising the lunch through National Lottery funding. After lunch we rotated activities, one group continued planting outside while the others made wooden name plaques using pyrography for the fruit trees.

The afternoon planting consisted of planting a variety of tree species into woodland strips including sweet chestnut, cherry, lime and hazel among others. The bare root tree whips are quite small and can be put into the ground fairly quickly and easily by making a notch cut with the spade and inserting them directly into the ground. It’s important to make sure all the tree roots are covered by healing the soil back in at the base of the tree so they’re not exposed to frost. On this occasion, we have trialled some different carboard tree guards (as pictured below) to reduce our use of plastic ones. We’re hoping they’ll withstand the test of time and the weather elements!

To round off the day we were invited to take part in a Wassail, which has pagan roots and has been practised in Britain for centuries. We gathered around an apple tree and listened to the story about the two brothers and the orchard. The story brings out ideas of reciprocity and that if we take care of the land, and in this case the orchard trees, our land and trees will take care of us. Historically, wassailing has taken many forms, but we followed the traditions of sipping on warmed spiced apple juice, parading down to the orchard banging pots and pans – to ward off bad spirits- and then blessing our newly planted orchard trees with apple juice and a piece of toast! It was a great way to celebrate together a wonderful day while wishing our trees the best health as they establish and grow.  Find out more about wassailing here. 

We would like to thank everyone who was involved in the planning and participation of the day, especially the young people who took part and parents and carers who gave their support.  And of course, a big thank you to Heartwood Social Farming for hosting a welcoming and engaging day of activities.

DWT’s Derwent Living Forest programme helps projects like this one to source and fund trees for wooded habitat creation which supports our vision to create a more connected living forest across Derbyshire’s Derwent catchment. We can support from project inception through to the planting day, get in touch to find out more by emailing us at dlf@derbyshirewt.co.uk.