Villagers turn out in ground force for community orchard tree planting near Milton Keynes

Villagers turned out in ground force for a community orchard tree planting near Milton Keynes at the weekend.

It really felt like spring was in the air when the sun was shining and Hanslope village welcomed their new community orchard with a morning of tree planting and villagers coming together and looking to the future.

It was 10am on the sunniest of Sundays and a year of planning and organising had finally developed into what was a fantastic day for the team of locals who have seen their dream become a reality.Two local tree surgeons James Powell and Chris Parker had an idea for a community orchard and when the plans of two local men met the drive of a few local women, that dream became a reality.

Hanslope is well known as a very community centred place, one of the local organisations is "Hanslope Horticulturalists". For the past two years this group of local horticulture enthusiasts have been uploading and voting on locally taken photos from around the village. Each month of the year the winning photo is displayed online and then collectively they go into a yearly calendar.This calendar was sold in village businesses and online. When local woman Vicky Crawford started selling the calendar she wasn’t sure where the proceeds would go, all she knew was that she wanted something based around horticulture to benefit from the proceeds.Here is when the two halves of this fabulous orchard team met.With the funding from the calendar and the knowledge and drive from the local tree surgeons, plans for the orchard finally started coming together.

The village hall itself was where the sign in for tree planting started. Locals were given the opportunity to sponsor a tree, for a lifetime or for a year, and then plant said tree with their own hands.By 10am when the tree planting officially began, the field was already full of families, neighbours and friends planting trees together.Around 40 new trees were planted in the orchard including apples of many varieties, plums, pears, hazelnuts, cherries and even mulberry trees.The farmer who had donated the land to the cause was there planting his sponsored tree with his family, and there were villagers of all ages joining in on the digging.

The trustees of the community orchard have managed to turn it into a local charity which should help in the future to gain funding to keep the site maintained and flourishing.

Each local that left the planting area, whether they were planting a tree or just along to lend a helping hand, left there with a feeling of being connected to nature and community and with hope for the future and the fruit that the trees will bring.

As the fitting Greek proverb states:

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.”

It may not have been all old men who were planting trees on the day, but the society and community of Hanslope Village that will benefit from this orchard for many decades to come is certainly going to be a great one.