Out & About January 2017

Following her popular book on snowdrops, Newbury-based journalist and author Naomi Slade decided to turn her attention to something new when fallen apples gave her the idea for her latest book, An Orchard Odyssey Fruit for thought

I t can take something very simple to bring an idea together and, for me, it was the sight of the ground strewn with yellow apples next to the Kennet and Avon Canal in central Newbury that led to my new book. The truth is that I love orchards and I always have done. I remember, as a small child, coming face to face with a huge apple at the end of my grandmother’s garden, it was huge – as big as my head, I remember – and I visited it every day watching it further swell and ripen.

passing. The legacy of gardening grandparents dwindled and knowledge was eroded. I find that people often view orchards with nostalgia, as something that was lovely, but is gone. Lost. Grubbed up irrevocably. The gnarled trees never to be lounged under again, a whole culture rendered a pretty, romantic story of times past. Yet, as a journalist specialising in gardening and lifestyle, the life I live and the landscape I see contradicts this. There are fruit trees everywhere.

Victorian variety Reverend WWilkes

five trees is an orchard

And as I walked around town, taking photographs and thinking about fruit trees, the idea developed and grew. The world didn’t need another gardening book, what it needed was a game- changing sort of book, offering a whole new perspective on orchard gardening. A new perspective that would bring it closer to the ordinary person, make it more relevant, more achievable. Something that considers the realities of busy lives and small gardens yet permits a sense of ownership of the trees and a greater connection to fruit, landscape, heritage – the things that matter most to the reader. The way forward was clear. For conservation purposes the definition of an orchard is ‘A minimum of five trees with crown edges not more than 20 metres apart’. And if one takes this definition and applies it to most people’s lives, this is a huge area and not many trees. Therefore, if you have five houses in a row and a fruit tree in each garden, this is an orchard. I looked out of my window. There are 18 fruit trees in the adjacent five gardens, including mine. In Oxford, there is a crowd-sourced foraging map run by Oxford Wild Food, which declared on twitter that “Oxford is not a city with added fruit trees, it is an orchard with added houses.” A truer word was never spoken – and to my mind, Newbury is no different. Thus, the book was born, An Orchard Odyssey , which aims to re-engage people with both their orchard heritage and inspire them to notice and

But as I grew, it seemed that there was a disconnect between people and fruit that I could not quite understand. Apples came from France and South Africa, not Kent or Herefordshire. People didn’t seem really to know what to do with the tree in their garden, or even to have the confidence to reliably identify and scrump an apple or a cherry or a plum in

My house, built in the 1870s, is on a road that 150 years ago punched straight through orchards that grew on the edge of town. And this is a pattern that is repeated elsewhere; around smaller market towns, trees old and new grow in back gardens and orchard remnants live on. And it is not just about gardens. Drive up the A4 towards Reading or head out on the back roads towards the M4 and the hedgerows are bursting with self-set apples. There is a walnut tree in the car park of Newbury Baptist church and

cherry plums spill out by the tow path. I have seen the ground carpeted with fruit on Newbury allotment – fruit crushed underneath the car wheels of allotmenteers heading for their primped and productive plots, seemingly unaware of the irony.

24