This year after four years of practising grafting my apple wood from one tree to another I have decided to expand my horizons to heritage varieties of apple. I have watched Stephen Hayes on YouTube for a few years now and each year he has encouraged others to graft heritage fruit trees and offering scions (small pieces of fruit wood the size of a pencil) to others for free. The idea is you help expand the range and number of heritage fruit trees, preserving biodiversity and of course England’s historical apples, many of which offer far better flavour and texture than their supermarket counterparts. Stephen asks in return that you…

Castanea sativa, sweet chestnut Sweet Chestnut is a species of flowering tree in the family Fagaceae, native to Europe and Asia Minor, and widely cultivated throughout the temperate world. A substantial, long-lived deciduous tree, it produces an edible seed, the chestnut, which has been used in cooking for millennia. Hardy to -29°C The tree is deciduous and grows to 20–35 m with a trunk often 2 m in diameter. The bark often has a net-shaped pattern with deep furrows or fissures running spirally in both directions up the trunk. The oblong-lanceolate, boldly toothed leaves are 16–28 cm long and 5–9 cm broad. The annual growth is sensitive to late spring and early autumn frosts…

Sorbus Domestica, Service Tree The Service tree is native to western, central and southern Europe, north-west Africa and south-west Asia. Hardy to -23°C The tree is deciduous growing to 15–20 m tall with a trunk up to 1 m diameter, though can also be a shrub 2–3 m tall on exposed sites. The bark is brown, smooth on young trees, becoming fissured and flaky on old trees. The winter buds are green, with a sticky resinous coating. The leaves are 15–25 cm long, pinnate with 13-21 leaflets 3–6 cm long and 1 cm broad,I find it similar to an ash tree in appearance. The flowers are 13–18 mm diameter, with five…

Amelanchier Ovalis Known to me as Serviceberry you may know it as shadbush, shadwood or shadblow, wild pear, juneberry, saskatoon, sugarplum or wild-plum or chuckley pear Amelanchier is native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, growing primarily in early successional habitats. Hardy to -29°C The tree is multi-stemmed, slow growing to about 5M The bark is grey smooth or fissuring when older. The leaves are deciduous. The flowers have five white petals, 25 mm long, The flowers appear in early spring. The fruit is a berry-like, purple to nearly black at maturity, 15 mm diameter,  maturing in summer. The fruit of is excellent to eat raw, delectably sweet, tasting somewhat like…

We have been planting thousands of trees this year and one question which we’re often asked during our Permaculture Courses is what are the best Permaculture plants and trees? Firstly we should understand that all trees and plants perform functions in our designs, we need to understand what those functions are for all the plants and trees we use, there are no real best plants which stand on their own apart from the other plants in our design systems. While many permaculture designers will tell you, you must have this plant or that tree, you still need to understand why and what that tree or plant does in your system.…