If you go to RHS Wisley’s orchard today you might be surprised that such a plain area belongs to this world-class garden. Or perhaps you might feel that you have wandered into an out-of-bounds staff area.
Not the case, says Sheila Das, one of the Surrey site’s four garden managers. The orchard is open to the public. “But at the moment it is not an inviting space for our visitors,” she says. “They come to the edge and think, ‘Should I really be in here?'”
Currently, the orchard does not offer much beyond narrow paths and rows of densely packed trees. Rather than merging seamlessly with the rest of the gardens, the 70-year-old orchard sits apart on the top of a hill.
But all this is about to change. A project is under way to redesign the orchard in a nature and people-friendly way. It will be transformed into a cheery and inviting space where Wisley’s 1.4mn yearly visitors will learn about growing fruit trees. There will be a much wider variety of plants, with meandering paths and picnic areas.
It will have a new plant trial area — where varieties of edible crops will be grown and observed to see if they are good enough to be given the RHS’s award of garden merit (AGM) — and a designated space for events including festivals and weddings. Most importantly, there will be plenty of information, advice and encouragement for visitors to go back home and start their own fruit cultivation.
There are no national statistics on how many of us grow fruit in our gardens at home. However, Wisley’s anecdotal evidence suggests that it is a very small number of people, and that number is falling.
Sheila Das, one of Wisley’s four garden managers, who is overseeing the project © RHS/Nicola Stocken
“How many people do you know who grow their own fruit at home?” says Das. “Apart from the team here, I don’t know anyone who does.”
Wisley’s experts fear that home growing has been falling out of favour. Sales evidence from Frank P Matthews, a tree nursery based in Worcestershire, suggests that interest in growing fruit in our gardens tends to be influenced by what the economy is doing.
“When times are good, our sales dip because people go on holiday and are out more, and are not thinking about self-sufficiency and saving money,” says Nick Dunn, owner of the nursery, which has been supplying retail outlets for more than 50 years.
When times get tougher, people think about saving money by growing their own food, he says. Wisley wants to change this by encouraging more of us to grow home on a long-term basis, whatever the wider economy is up to. But, says Das, it has to be in a way that can cope with our climatically challenging times.
According to the Met Office, this year England suffered its driest July since 1935. The UK also experienced heat far more intense and widespread than in previous comparable heat waves, with July recording 40C for the first time.
This means, both Das and Dunn agree, that growers should look at eco-friendly approaches as opposed to the style in which Wisley’s own orchard has been nurtured up until now. When it was planted in the 1950s, the orchard was following the commercial wisdom of the time. The 2,000 trees, mostly apple, were all planted at the same time and according to what the RHS considered to be genetically important — rather than what was suited to the site conditions.
The result is now a limited crop prone to disease and congestion. The orchard suffers from a pest called apple blossom weevil and is blighted with mildew, a fungal disease.
“Our orchard is symbolic of everything that’s wrong with food production. We have a lot of cultivars that won’t survive on our site on top of a sandy hill in Surrey unless we use a lot of water, pesticides and fertilisers, which Wisley doesn’t want to do any more,” she says.
So it is time for change. As part of the project, Wisley will lead the way on growing fruit in a sustainable, 21st-century way. This means adopting a “minimum input” approach by shunning the use of chemicals such as pesticides and fertilisers, and drastically reducing water consumption.
This approach incorporates a “no dig” system said to lead to healthier soil and plantings, and already in practice at Wisley’s World Food Garden, which opened in June 2021. Leaving the soil to its own devices and mulching (adding an organic layer to the top of the soil) reduces the need for watering and chemicals such as fertilisers and weedkillers.
Merton Gage plumps © RHS/Tim Sandall
Beurre Clairgeau pears © RHS/Tim Sandall
Minimum input also involves selecting cultivars that are more drought and heat-tolerant and able to thrive in a changing climate. “We also need to choose cultivars suited to our own gardens’ condition, considering soil type, aspect and microclimate, Wisley included,” says Das.
It is considering apple and pear cultivars from areas such as the south of France, as well as warmer climate species such as almonds, apricots, persimmon and sea buckthorn.
“This works with nature, so instead of feeling we’re sitting at the top of the food chain, we’re part of it as we once were,” she says.
This approach means that we will have to accept that our homegrown fruit will not be the flawless shape and size we have come to expect from shops. Or entirely pest-free. “If your crops aren’t being eaten [by pests] you’re not part of the ecosystem. And less perfect is perfect,” says Das.
Your homegrown efforts may come out oddly shaped but the consolation is that they should taste better than shop bought, says Dunn, 70, a holder of the RHS Victoria Medal of Honor for his service to the horticultural industry.
“If you pick your fruit when it is ripe you get all the flavour, whereas commercial fruit is picked slightly unripe,” he says. This is to avoid it being bruised during transportation, storage and handling. But because it is picked early the sugars have not had a chance to fully develop “and it’s the sugars that give fruit its flavour”, says Dunn.
If your crops aren’t being eaten [by pests] you’re not part of the ecosystem. And less perfect is perfect
Das, who trained at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, had her “lightbulb” moment for the orchard redesign in 2016 when a student mentioned that he liked the new orchard at RHS Rosemoor in Devon because it was part of the gardens. That says “a seed was sown in my mind” to redesign Wisley’s orchard to incorporate it into the rest of the gardens.
The orchard’s new design is by Roger Platts of RP Garden Design & Nurseries. It is a 10 to 15-year project, although changes will be evident much sooner and visitors will be encouraged to visit during the transformation to see the changes. Work has already begun, with Wisley and Frank P Matthews propagating from existing stock to avoid the risk of losing cultivars they want to keep. Mildewed trees are already being felled and pathways being created. As the project is mainly about improving the soil and the plantings, “we’re not talking about megabucks here”, says Das.
The project is part of a wider overhaul by Matthew Pottage, Wisley’s curator. Wisley’s food section will eventually cover 19 acres of “edible landscape” incorporating the redesigned 11-acre orchard, the World Food Garden and a planned Fruit Collections Area.
It is all overseen by Das, 49, who joined Wisley in 2015 as garden manager in charge of edibles, education, seed and wellbeing. She has a core team of seven gardeners augmented at various times by students, apprentices, casual pickers and volunteers.
“The orchard is about showing the bigger picture. If people go there and understand it, they’ll be able to go home and create it on a smaller scale,” she says.
Matthew Pottage, Wisley’s curator © RHS/Joanna Kossak
Will it follow the World Food Garden’s experiments in creating novel shapes to attract our interest, such as an apple espalier whose branches are being trained to replicate Harry Potter’s Deathly Hallows symbol? That remains to be seen. But that is determined to do whatever it takes to get us all growing our own fruit.
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