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Barnfield College at Wigmore Valley Park orchard

Wigmore Valley Park orchard

In May and June 2024, we worked with students and teachers from the Skills for Life department at Barnfield College. Together, we:

put numbered tags by the trees

weeded the tree circles (young trees struggle with competition from grass)
checked for missing stakes and ties

The collaboration was so successful that we'll be continuing to work together from September 2024.

The key ingredients: a group of teachers and students who were up for the challenge and a minibus and someone to drive it, so the students could get to and from the site. Tools and expertise came from Edible High Town and Konni at Luton Orchards.

Teachers and students from Barnfield College in front of their fabulous minibus.

About Wigmore Valley Park orchard

Wigmore Valley Park orchard was planted in 2021 by the Peace Garden Initiative to commemorate lives lost during the Coronavirus Pandemic. You can even see a video of the planting day [YouTube].

Experts from the East of England Apples and Orchards Project carefully selected the varieties, with the aim of the orchard in time becoming a National Plant Collection. National collections are an important way to conserve cultivated plants. To deserve collection status, Wigmore Valley Park orchard contains many of the known varieties of apple, pear and plum and cherry from Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.

Why do this work at Wigmore Valley Park orchard?

Orchards are under threat
The diverse heritage of our local fruit varieties is in decline and under threat of extinction. Most 'old' varieties are no longer commercially grown. If the last tree of a certain cultivar dies, it is irretrievably 'lost', because cultivars can only be propagated through grafting. The UK lost 90% of its traditional orchards, so keeping them alive in community orchards helps preserve our rich heritage.

We need to be sure what we have at Wigmore
There is a planting plan from before trees went into the ground. Later, a survey was done to GPS-log the trees in Luton Council's tree logging software (Arbortrack). However, there are some inconsistencies, and the most failsafe way to know exactly where the trees are, is to physically number them.

More care is needed to help the trees establish
The trees were well planted and protected, but without hands-on regular checkups and work, fruit trees will struggle to establish. At Wigmore Valley Park orchard, we noticed that deer nibbled the trees and that more work overall is needed to help the trees grow well.

It's a great learning experience
With the support of the Peace Garden initiative, Luton Council's Park and Countryside Service, Luton Orchards connected to Barnfield College with the idea of involving students in the work. Students and teachers will learn many skills including jobs that need to be done to manage an orchard, orienteering skills, and enjoy the nature around them.

Day 1 - 13 May

Discovering Wigmore Valley Park

None of the students and only one teacher had visited Wigmore Valley Park before. The visit was a great way to learn about Luton's green spaces.

Tagging the trees

Students tagged each 'station' with a metal tag. This is the surest way to help us register and care for the trees in the future.

Logging the numbers

Each tag number had to be written into the list. If the tree label with the cultivar name was still visible, students also registered it.

Students and teachers worked incredibly methodically to carry out taggin of the trees, double checking each tree to make sure the recorded data was correct. The quality of results is fantastic.

The original planting plan

Concentric circles of 69 different trees.

Arbortrack data

67 trees are logged in Arbortrack, Luton Council's tree maintenance software - where are the missing 2?

Dividing the task into teams

Coming up with a logical route so that several teams can tag at the same time.

Tools and tags

We used galvanised nails to hammer the metal tags into the posts (not the trees!) at each station

Result: the completed list of tagged locations

68 tree locations have been tagged. Unless we missed one, this is the actual number of trees on this site

Day 2 - 20 May

Completing the tagging

The fastest team of the previous session was tasked in completing the final dozen of trees. And they breezed though it!

Starting on weeding

With the tagging done, students could start on the weeding around the trees. Vital to keep them happy and healthy (the trees!).

Proper wellies

Each student now has a pair of wellies for the task - we were lucky with the weather this week, though.

Day 3 - 3 June

Weeding

You might not think that the meadow is a problem for fruit trees, but vigorous grasses compete for water and nutrients, so it's important to keep a circle around the tree as clear as possible from vegetation.

Ant hills

We took care to leave ant hills intact where we found them. However, in this case, we needed to clear it away around the trunk, as the buildup of soil will damage the bark.

Reward after a morning of hard graft

After a morning's hard work, the students earned their Luton Orchards badges.

Day 4 - 10 June

Teachers on the scythe

After all the rain, the grass had grown a lot, so we had to mow around the trees for better access. Konni gave a scythe demonstration - students were not allowed to try, but teachers were keen, too, and some were naturals at it!

Students on rakes

Using traditional wooden hay rakes, we raked up the cut grass. This turned out to be more fun than expected! The wide prongs of the rakes are perfect to catch the long length of scythed grass.

Mulching with grass

Woodchippings are the best type of mulch, but we couldn't get any delivered in time for our work days. The second best mulch is always the one you have available, so we used the cut grass to mulch around the trees. This will help conserve water, keep weeds down and feed the trees over time.

It's incredible how much 4 mornings of work can achieve. At the end of June, we now have:

all 68 trees tagged with a metal tag and a handwritten number as a backup
all trees logged in a What Three Words list with their GPS locations
most of the trees weeded
all trees inspected for missing stakes and guards

What's next?

The collaboration between Luton Orchards and Barnfield College was a success. Head of School, Sandra Stack said:

"Thank you for allowing Barnfield College to be part of the Luton Orchard project. On the students return this morning they spoke highly of their experience and actually, so did the staff.

As you know, it has taken a lot of planning from both sides to set up our partnership, but even from our first session... we can see the benefits.

What a great start and we are all looking forward to working with you next year and see how the tasks need to be adapted to meet the seasons."

From autumn, we'll work to improve the guards, mulch with woodchip and carry out basic winter pruning and maintenance.

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