For Apple Day: Eat your way to the river
It's Apple Day, one of my favourite days of the year and what better way to celebrate than to tell you about my recent trip to Longney, where Gloucestershire Orchard Trust have 18 acres of apple orchard under their tender care. Here you'll find older orchards with some trees well over a century old, plus their newer plantings of around 94 Gloucestershire cultivars which have just acquired national plant collection status at Plant Heritage . The jury's out on the actual number as DNA testing has revealed at least one locally named variety is actually a more well known one: Ribston Pippin in this case. Don't worry, there are dozens there which definitely have their origins rooted firmly in Gloucestershire and their cultivation at Longney is vital to their continued presence and preservation. There were around 200 local varieties at one time and today it's around 100 still in existence. Steve Mason - the Trust's Curator - was our knowledgeable guide who invited ...
Love the new water feature VP .. and a bonus plant to set it off too !
ReplyDeleteI had volunteer annuals pop up between patio stones the last two years .. I just let them be .. didn't have the heart to "clean my bricks ?" haha
I Love volunteers. It's one of the joys of gardening. It really looks sweet there.
ReplyDeleteIt flooded our pond in the back garden too... Had to rush out and check there were no fish swimming around in in the lawn! lol ;)
ReplyDeleteWe always call our flood in the garden, which appears after heavy rain, our other water feature. Another job which needs sorting. x
ReplyDeleteJoy and jane marie - hi! I love the north American term 'volunteer', sounds much better than 'weed'! I get plenty of 'volunteer' spuds up at the allotment!
ReplyDeletePaul & Melanie - oh no not again for you guys. That must be about the 3rd time in less than a year?
Louise - I'm not sure what else we can do to sort the problem. We've got drainage installed already. Luckily the stream hasn't done much damage (touch wood) so far as we're on quite a severe slope.