I was really sad to hear that the land where Mossley Community Orchard is situated has been put up for sale.

Blackcurrant in the bag!

Those pesky weeds weren’t half hard to get out

actually I wasn’t just sad, I was REALLY ANGRY !!

A few weeks ago a few of the people from the local community went into top Mossley to plant some fruit bushes, to increase our ever growing orchard in the middle of an urban area. In our little group we worked tirelessly planting a range of environmentally and insect loving plants.

This worm will work it’s magic in the orchard

These 2 pop up everywhere!

Rob explaining how apple trees grow

But then, disaster, we get a call…………

The Council are going to sell the land, which will probably be bought by builders, which will probably be built on. It makes me ‘fuming’, when a lovely green space gets crushed, cemented and built on and along with the innocent wildlife.

I do not think it is fair that the council can (sell the land to builders who will) just roll up and build on all of our back breaking work.

Places like orchards or small green community spaces are key to get kids involved in gardening.

As you well know I am rooting the RHS Greening Grey Britain Campaign and this is what it’s all about

“Gardens play a crucial role in urban and suburban areas, and potentially will become even more important in the future as our climate changes. From helping protect us against flooding and extremes of temperature, to supporting wildlife and helping gardeners to be healthy, gardens can provide an amazing range of benefits”

I wrote this myself,

You can watch me reading it out here:

A little bit about the Orchard

We planted the orchard on a really sunny day back in March 2016; this video shows just how many people came together and how great it was….

Over 50 volunteers from Operation Farm and other community groups came together to plant nine mature fruit trees and hundreds of daffodils and it was great fun.

Only two weeks ago, on a flipping awful day, me and a group of other folk, did some weeding and planted some soft fruit bushes there – here’s a link to a photo video we put together.

I know that Operation Farm and other local groups have a lot of plans for the orchard this year; they wanted to use it as a place to teach us kids about gardening. They wanted to plant some wildflowers too, to help encourage more wildlife. Well that won’t happen if they build houses there instead

If you think this is wrong, here’s some more info and a petition to sign and visit their Facebook page at Save Mossley Community Orchard

I really hope that Tameside Council change their mind about the sale