Teaching Gardens

The teaching gardens provide an opportunity for members to improve their experience and skills in growing a wide variety of fruit with the help of other members.

We start our year in January with work in the teaching gardens at Dewhurst Road, Huddersfield and the Nursery at Otley.

We meet at Dewhurst Road on a Wednesday and at Otley on Thursday of the following week. Meetings continue at fortnightly intervals throughout the year, weather permitting.

The work is varied according to season and follows the fruit growing year. As an example:

• January: Winter pruning of young fruit trees, older established trees and cordon trees
• February: Planting and maintenance of soft fruit, grafting course
• March: Grafting courses and management of newly grafted trees

Work continues fortnightly on both sites through til December, giving the opportunity to gain experience in all aspects of fruit growing. Full details of work days are published in the member’s quarterly newsletter.

Members of the Northern Fruit Group are always welcome to come along to any, or all, of the work days.   There are always experienced people on hand to answer questions and often snippets of plants are available for re homing as well as spare, in season, produce.

Dewhurst Road Allotments, Huddersfield

This is an established site with an area approximately equivalent to 8 standard allotment plots. We are establishing a reference orchard of apple cultivars and have, so far, around 50 different apple varieties. These have all been grafted from scion wood obtained from reference collections at Brogdale and Wisley so that we can be certain that each cultivar is true to type.

We also have a wide selection of other fruit trees and many varieties of soft fruit.

Otley

We took on and began developing this plot in 2017. This garden covers an area of 300 m² of semi derelict ground that we are certain we can return to a healthy productive site. At present we are testing various areas to ascertain the soil characteristics and spot problem areas. Several clumps of garden flowers have sprung up and we have replanted them together to give a pretty show. We are considering how best to plan the site, to date, we are agreed on a fruiting hedge along the margin of the plot facing the valley. More brains to help plan are always welcome.

This is an exciting project for those wishing to see and help develop a productive garden from scratch.

Get Involved

If you are not a member of The Northern Fruit Group but would like to get involved with these projects, then why not join?  Our membership fee is very reasonable and will qualify you to receive our quarterly newsletter too.  Click here to see details of membership