About the event

General Information

The Severn Treescapes project has teamed up with Vale Landscape Heritage Trust to run an orchard surveying workshop to increase confidence among landowners and surveyors in identifying key features of a functioning and biodiverse orchard.

Being a dual purpose land use, orchards can provide a vertical farming element to traditional farming and ultimately provide a new income from the fruit, as well as providing a fabulous habitat for a huge range of wildlife and beneficial insects. This workshop looks to provide information, education and confidence to enable participants to manage their orchards successfully.

Orchards are iconic features in the Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire landscape but have declined by at least 75 % in the last 50 yrs. The drive to plant new and restore old traditional orchards will help to reverse the decline of this priority habitat and of the wildlife that depends on it.

Well managed orchards create an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the wildlife potential in the vicinity. Orchards provide excellent feeding habitat for birds, bats and invertebrates, and where adjacent to strong mature hedgerow networks radiating towards nearby mature woodlands, unimproved grasslands and other orchards, increase connectivity across the wider landscape.

Surveying

Orchards are a fantastic mix of habitat – grassland, woodland edge, deadwood, nectar, niches, crevices, shelter, shade. They also provide a mass of food for wildlife as well as for humans. They feature particularly in the landscapes of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire and are of particular note in the Vale landscape. There are increasing numbers of community orchards and their value as spaces for immersion in nature and enhancing wellbeing is well known.

This workshop is another in the suite of workshops looking at orchards through the year and through a lifetime. It is intended to provide skills and confidence for people to recognise orchards in the landscape and to enable those orchards to be recorded on the priority habitats inventory which is held by the Peoples Trust for Endangered Species (PTES).

The PHI layer is often in need of updating where records are old or managements have changed for good or ill. Orchards which are on the PHI are eligible for increased land management payments, which in turn might encourage their protection and improved management, improving the habitats therein.

The workshop will cover the use of Treescapes Orchard survey form, with practical practice on site at the VLHT’s Stockton Orchard.

The location is at Stockton Orchard, next to Tiddesley Wood, Pershore, UK. W3W sunk.headlight.endings. Please use the Tiddesley Wood car park.

Please bring appropriate footwear and clothing for field work.

Tea/coffee/juice provided.

Booking essential.