South Cotswold Orchard Project
Bath & North East Somerset Council and South Gloucestershire Council are working together to develop a Cotswold orchard project. The aim will be to secure funding from the Cotswold AONB Board's sustainability grant during autumn 2007.
Volunteers will be asked to get involved, researching historical and current orchards,
local tree varieties and traditional recipes. It is hoped that the funds will allow for existing publicly accessible orchards to be revived, or if small pieces of land can be found, new trees could be planted. There will also be small numbers of local fruit trees for school grounds.
It is hoped that orchard management training courses and wassailing events can also be run to involve and enthuse local people in the
fascinating history and lore associated with orchards.
Fingers crossed for successful funding!
Focus on ...
Gardens
Is your garden good for amphibians, snakes, and lizards.?
These groups of animals need all the friends that they can get if they are to survive the perils and challenges of modern life. Gardens can be safe refuges for these animals and can be made even better with a little fine tuning of your gardening practice.
Make room for a compost heap. This will allow you to turn garden waste into rich compost as well as providing warm breeding grounds for slow worms and grass snakes. These animals will help you control slugs and snails organically.
Piles of woody waste from shrub pruning in a quiet corner are excellent cover for newts, toads and lizards in the summer and will eventually rot down into manageable compost, which can be used for your roses.
Piles of stones and rocks and dry stone walls will encourage amphibians and reptiles such as toads, newts, slow worms and frogs to over winter and in the summer linger to eat garden pests which could attack seedlings and vegetables.
If you are lucky your pond could be visited by grass snakes, attractive brown snakes with a yellow collar. Grass snakes are harmless to pets and people but will hunt garden pests and small pond creatures. Toads, frogs and newts may well breed in a garden ponds provided they do not contain goldfish which will predate them.
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