Training and events

Training

As well as providing training to our orchard leaders to look after the new community orchards, we also hold training days open to the public. These days are one-day introductory courses, including ‘Everything you need to know about growing fruit trees in urban spaces’, 'Apple ID' and "Planting fruit trees in your garden". We also offer workshops on specific technical skills, such as formative and maintenance pruning, grafting and maybe even cider-making! Check our homepage to find out more about our upcoming courses, as well as courses run by some other London organisations that may be of interest. 

 

We are planning our training and events schedule at the moment, lots of interesting things to come, please check back later.

 

Previous Events

  • Winter Wassail,  Claybury Park. Read our blog about the wassail

A short film about the London Orchard Festival 2012 that we organised with our friends at The London Wildlife Trust. It formed part of Common Ground's Apple Day festivities to celebrate apples, orchards and local distinctiveness. This film was made by Maxi Dugnani (maxidugnani [at] gmail [dot] com) who very generously made it for free for us, please get in touch with him if you like his work!

 

Resources for community groups at Apple Day

Apple Day is a celebration that was founded by Common Ground in 1990, as a new calendar custom for the apple and orchard to “take their rightful place in our culinary and cultural lives once more”. 

We have a crusher and a apple press that can be used by community groups for their own harvest celebrations and events.

Please kath [at] thelondonorchardproject [dot] org (Contact us) if you would like to find out more about borrowing this equipment.

"I've really learned a lot about tree pruning and it's fantastic" 

"We all thought the training was very interesting, fun and informative"

"I went to the event on Saturday with a friend and it was great! She is now going to plant an apple tree in her garden thanks to your tips"

"Thank you very much for the workshop, it was very well delivered and I hope we will continue working together.I am very much in ‘orchard spirit’ after our session, so tomorrow our volunteers and I will focus on fruit trees maintenance in nature area".

"Really enjoyed the training last weekend, it was very interesting and will no doubt prove useful in the months and years to come"!

“My expectations were exceeded….everything seems possible and straightforward!”

“It was amazing, packed full of interesting facts!”

“The trainer was amazingly good. It was very clear, he went at the right pace and had fantastic personal knowledge”

“Excellent! I have learnt a lot.”

"It has been a very fulfilling day with plenty of information to help us with our first orchard project"