Life on Pig Row: Appreciate our orchards

Andrew Oldham writes about Pig Row, which is three gardens over a quarter of an acre in Scouthead. Visit at www.lifeonpigrow.co.uk

THERE IS a new orchard in Grotton but last month on these pages one local wrote about how the fruit trees had an ‘ugly support structure’.

I don’t know whether to laugh or pull my hair out that such a thing was at the top of their check list for how an orchard should look.

I applaud that the orchard now has room for children to play in but it does show how little we understand the fruit landscape we once lived in.

We have lost hundreds of orchards over the last century – great apple trees, glorious cherries and mouth-watering pears have all fallen under the claws of a JCB, reduced to firewood and ash.

We were once the fruit garden of the world and so when a new orchard is planted, we have a chance to embrace this wonderful past.

There is nothing in this world that compares to biting into a fresh apple or watching the bead of juice that pearls on the top of cherries when newly picked.

So, for those in Grotton whose concerns are supports rather than the lasting legacy of reintroducing fruit orchards to our children, fruits trees in open ground only need support for the first three years after which the supports are taken out and the tree grows on, supplying spring blossom, summer and autumn fruit.

In three years’ time Grotton will have a cacophony of apple blossom and there shouldn’t be a support in sight.

So people of Saddleworth on the fruit route, be proud of the blossom and fruit to come, ignore the short-lived supports and remember you leave behind a legacy that will be in this community decades after you have gone the way of those supports.