Guide to Community Fruit Growing

Our mission is to make fruit growing a part of the economy in West Yorkshire, and we envision by 2050, everyone will have picked fruit off a tree and eaten it. Below are the list of activities we suggest to community groups looking to enable more fruit growing in their area.

Have a look at the options and get back to us with information about what you think would best suit your group’s needs.

Option 1: Orchard Design

£170

A consultation with a Fruit Works team member to make a plan for your community orchard or fruit garden. We will run through all the important considerations, dig test holes and work with you to come up with the best design for your community’s needs.

We will then draw up the design and help you share it with your community for feedback.

Option 2: Apple Juicing

£420

A fun fruit-themed day to bring local people together to get excited and engaged with the new orchard. Apple Days are always popular, especially with families.

We provide fruit and the apple pressing equipment, and facilitate the session to ensure everybody can enjoy pressing fruit safely.

Option 3: Orchard Planting

£420 labour

£75 per tree (plant and materials) | £10 per currant bush (plant and material)

We’ll provide the trees, cages, stakes, ties, mulch and facilitate the orchard planting so that the trees are given the best possible start in their new home. Participants will learn how to plant and stake fruit trees correctly.

Option 4: Maintenance Session

£140 labour

£6 per tree/bush for materials

1 hour session.

Now your trees are planted, the work continues: caring for your trees early in their lives is critical to their long term health.

In an aftercare visit, we’ll come and give your trees a health check, pruning where needed and providing a top up of woodchip mulch. We’ll let you know our advice going forward. This visit can be with volunteers from your group or you can choose to have us come on our own.

Option 5: Pruning workshop

£260

2 hour session.

A practical and informative workshop on the basics of fruit tree pruning from one of our team of fruit tree specialists. Your group will learn the theory and practical elements of fruit tree pruning and get to have a go themselves using a range of tools that we provide.

Option 6: Grafting workshop

£280 labour

£3.60 per participant for materials

2.5 hour session, with up to 10 participants.

Grafting is the skill of propagating fruit trees by attaching a cutting (scion) to some roots (a rootstock). In the workshop your group will learn the theory and practice of this valuable and satisfying skill and take 2 of their own grafted trees to grow on at home.

Option 7: Fruit tree giveaway

In urban areas, some of the best opportunities for nature recovery and food growing are on our doorstep, literally: in our gardens. By growing fruit trees in our gardens, we can massively increase urban tree cover in our cities and the amount of fruit that is grown, shared and eaten. With a fruit tree giveaway project, we get to plant lots of new fruit trees in our local area that were otherwise absent.

Option 1: Workshop & tree giveaway

Appropriate for smaller groups, and those more likely to have the time & tools to plant the trees themselves, and likelihood of attending a workshop.

How it works:

The group are invited to sign up for a free, 2-hour Fruit Tree Planting & Care workshop with a free fruit tree as part of the workshop
They fill in a form to sign up and indicate what kind of tree they need
In the workshop, we run through planting, pruning, mulching, watering and all the top tips for raising fruit trees
We provide the requested trees from our local nursery at the workshop for people to take home

£25 per tree

£575 workshop and project management

Option 2: Tree giveaway with Fruit Works team delivering & planting

Appropriate for more ambitious amounts of trees to be planted, and groups where some members are likely to need help with planting the tree.