You may have seen reports that 2025 is a good year for butterflies. I have certainly noticed more of them in my garden. However, butterfly and moth numbers are in overall decline, and one factor is loss of habitat. The Butterfly Conservation Trust has researched the positive impact that even a single tree has on butterfly numbers, so spaces like the orchard are more important than ever.
One of our volunteers has recently recorded these species as making use of the various habitats in the orchard: ringlet, small copper gatekeeper comma meadow brown small skipper marbled white common blue (all above are butterflies )
excitingly, a very speedy hummingbird hawk moth Nemophora metallica (a type of shiny longhorn moth – see Norfolk Moths for more details) southern hawker dragonfly common blue damselfly
If you have taken any snaps of insect wildlife in the orchard, please share them on Facebook or email them and we will put them on the website. It is so exciting to see the changes through the seasons. Thanks to Juliette for these gorgeous photos.
12 January 2025, 2:30pm. Start at Trumpington Orchard, process to Clay Farm Community Garden.
I like the change from one year to the next to be a gradual tilt, a gentle slide through the darkness towards just a little more light. I ease myself into my resolutions, if I make any, and give myself time to reflect, to look back before I start marching forward towards all the tasks that await me. One thing that makes the transition easier is having something to look forward to in the new year. Our annual wassail, that blessing and celebration of orchards and their fruit, is a point of bright light, a feeling of kindness and sharing. Whatever the weather, there is an atmosphere of friendship and delight in the natural world. So join us, because everyone is welcome in the orchard. You can participate, or just observe, as you prefer. The origins of the wassail go back centuries, but the main ingredients are singing, blessing the apple trees with cider (or juice) and thanking the trees for the apples. So it’s a flexible event. Our singing will be supported by community folk musicians who are a regular feature of our celebrations. This year we are starting in the orchard and processing to Clay Farm Community Garden, where hot mulled apple juice will be served. The practical details: This event is suitable for accompanied children as well as adults. It’s a free event but donations are extremely welcome, because they are the only source of income for our orchard. Wrap up warm, wear sensible outdoor footwear. A torch is a good idea too. There are no facilities at the orchard, but there are some at the community gardens. If you have to come by car, please share transport and park with the utmost consideration for our neighbours and local residents. Trumpington Orchard is next to the Guided Busway stop, and has good access via cycle paths.
Orchard maintenance can sometimes be idyllic – just imagine it. You have beautiful surroundings, the sun is shining, the work is gentle. Imagine doing something like picking off the small spare fruit in early June, or raking up the leaves in the soft autumn light. But… then again…back to reality, where sometimes the weather is a bit British. Our group of volunteers from Hays battled sudden rainstorms to do some proper hard work. They recycled our old picnic benches to make some more raised beds, and they cleared and scythed some of the grass around the beds and the base of the swift tower. They dug up some odd bits and pieces too. Honestly, we have spent over ten years clearing out rubbish from the ground (mainly bits of bicycle, no surprise in Cambridge I suppose) but still, there’s a shoe and a flower pot and goodness knows what else. After all this hard work, the orchard is looking really good now, so pay us a visit and enjoy all the wild flowers. Just don’t leave one of your shoes behind.
Before the work beganCleared and mulched. Happy tree, happy volunteerMeasure twice, cut once. Good skillsRecycling the old picnic bench. A good job done. The sun did not shine all the time. Buried treasure, of a kind.
The poet Xan Oku (active on Twitter/X) says that flowers remind us why the rain is necessary. On our Blossom Day celebration we had plenty of both, but about 25 people turned out to enjoy the orchard. It is beautiful, whatever the weather. We made artwork using thumbprints for the blossom, and enjoyed the music. The blossom may not have outdone the dramatic clouds above the orchard, but the benefit is that there is still blossom to see. If you have any photos please send them in, we love to see them.
Other news – we think the swifts are back! If you see them please drop us a comment saying the date and time of your sighting.
The musicians giving it their all. Photo by Ursula Stubbings. Beautiful thumbprint artworkDark and brooding skies
Our wonderful orchard volunteers from Astra Zeneca spent a slightly rainy day in the orchard on 23rd April 2024. They achieved so much! They used all of their skills to work out how to put new picnic tables and raised beds together and get them installed. They also weeded around the apple trees and added a circle of mulch around them. Mulch can be anything from wood and bark chips to compost – even a thick layer of cardboard will help. The mulch prevents weeds from popping up and reduces water loss, and so keeps the trees from being stressed. Mulches such as compost or bark will also add some nutrients. The small-leaved lime trees also got some mulch. Finally they weeded the stool bed area and set it in to year 2 of the rootstock production cycle. So the orchard is looking gorgeous, all set for our Blossom Day Bank Holiday Monday 6th May 2 – 4pm, and for a lot of picnics throughout the summer. How come even a sandwich and a packet of crisps tastes so much better out of doors?
As I write this I can see the plum trees are coming into blossom in my garden, and the petals are already falling from the little Fuji cherry, ‘Ko Jo No Mai’. We expect so much from this short-lived spectacle, we go in search of it and celebrate its beauty every year. Blossom has been associated with all things feminine, partly because of associations with spring and with the romance of flowers. John Ruskin, Victorian artist and critic, described the women in Pre-Raphaelite paintings as ‘girl-blossoms’. In our orchard, however, the blossom can be enjoyed by everyone. The Woodland Trust has put together a calendar of the blossom times of various trees that you’ll spot in British countryside, orchards and hedgerows. The crab apples usually flower before the domestic apples, and by early May we should have quite a few trees in their best blossom dresses.
Save the date for our Blossom Day We will be in the orchard from 2pm to 4pm. Our folk musician friends, who usually play at our Wassail, will be here in (hopefully) warmer weather to entertain our visitors, and the trees. Last year’s blossom-themed finger-painting activity was so popular we are running it again. We are hoping to provide blossom cakes and treats as well. More details to follow, so keep an eye on this website and our social media feeds.
The word wassail comes from the Norse and old English traditional drinking salute; ‘Was hael’ meaning ‘good health’. The response is ‘Drinc hael!’ or ‘I drink to your health’ – in other words, ‘Cheers’!
Did you wassail? It is the most fashionable outdoor activity this winter, with wassail events taking place across the country, in rural, urban and community orchards of all sizes. What makes this revival so marvellous is that you can wassail any way you like, picking and choosing from a rag-bag of traditions that make the most sense for your orchard and its community.
our musicians a’ wassailing, beneath a stormy sky
I have researched and written about wassailing, but there is a lot that we can’t be sure about. Wassailing is a folk custom that can be traced back, in its original form of a drinking toast, to Anglo Saxon times. It became more ritualised from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, and then went through a period where it was not so important, until the Victorians rediscovered it. Although some Victorian commentators (and some modern ones) love to see wassailing as a living remnant of ancient ‘pagan’ rituals, there is no evidence of this. However there are possible connections between the wassail and ancient forms of tree worship.
wassail toast ready to go
Whenever and wherever it started, Wassailing has always taken place between Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night, (using either the Old or New calendar dates, according to local preference). The wassail as a way of sharing a drink became a way of celebrating the end of the twelve days of Christmas. During the Victorian era, the wassail was a folk ritual that was celebrated in prose and image more often than it took place on the ground, but it was certainly a living Christmas custom down in the orchards.
Today you can celebrate as we do at Trumpington with mummers, musicians and a lot of singing and dancing. We sing ‘here we come a wassailing’ and we pour apple juice as an offering to each tree. We also hang toast in the branches – toast was put at the bottom of drinking goblets to act as a sort of a filter, and this is where the expression ‘raising a toast’ comes from. Orchards with more space might consider lighting a bonfire, or putting candles at the base of each tree (safety first) but I think the custom of firing shotguns has probably had its day!
We will be holding our annual Wassail on Sunday 14th January from 2pm. The Lord of Misrule will lead a celebration of our apple trees and the orchard. In centuries past, wassailing was a way of asking the trees to produce as many apples as they could. Now, I think it is more of a community celebration, and a moment to think about and celebrate the wider landscape and environment. Whatever you have in mind when you attend, it is a lot of fun and certainly not solemn. Children are very welcome, and we encourage you to dress for the occasion. Cider used to be a big part of wassailing but now we provide mulled apple juice in return for a donation.
Practical details: – please park with consideration to our neighbours in this residential area. please wear outdoor clothing and waterproof shoes. It is a good idea to bring a torch as it gets dark so early. Please remember we have no toilet facilities on site or nearby.
Grafting is an ancient technique for propagating apple varieties. If you plant an apple pip of one variety, say a Histon Favourite, that pip will not grow up into a Histon Favourite apple tree. It will be a unique tree, maybe better, maybe worse. So if you want to get another Histon Favourite tree, you have to take some wood from the tree and somehow attach it to a rootstock. The rootstock helps to control the height and vigour of the tree. This process of ‘sticking’ the variety wood (the scion) to the rootstock is called grafting. Last week staff from Cambridge city council and a couple of orchard volunteers came along to learn about grafting fruit trees and practice their grafting techniques. It’s great to keep these skills alive. We also noticed the bees were very active, making natural honeycomb in the observation hive.
We will be holding a Blossom Day celebration in the orchard on Sunday 30 April 2023, between 2pm and 4pm. As well as an opportunity to enjoy the blossom, there will be guided tours around the orchard, introducing visitors to the swift tower, the beehive and the stool bed where we are propagating rootstocks. Bring a picnic and enjoy the orchard with us.
Orchard Blossom Day was an event launched a couple of years ago by the UK Orchard Network, but of course fruit tree blossom has been celebrated for centuries, and by some very famous artists including those shown below – Millais, Van Gogh and David Hockney. Why not take some photos or bring your sketchbook (digital or paper) and make the most of this fleeting beauty? We would love to share your images of the orchard here.
Apple Blossoms or Spring. 1858-59. Sir John Everett Millais Bt PRA (1829-96). Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, WirralDavid Hockney, from the exhibtion The Arrival of Spring, Normandy 2020, Royal Academy 2021. Vincent Van Gogh, The White Orchard, Arles, 1888 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Trumpington Community Orchard 