Discover our orchards

We have 199 orchard trees in Beauchamp's Meadow, with a variety of species native to the East of England. These include the Malden Wonder, Summer Sun, Twinning Pippen and Braintree Seeding.

These biodiverse habitats are a haven for wildlife, offering food, shelter, and breeding sites. Aging fruit trees with decaying wood provide vital habitats for invertebrates, fungi, birds, and mammals. Unimproved grasslands in orchards support diverse plant species and essential mycorrhizal fungi. Minimal soil disturbance ensures a healthy subterranean ecosystem.

Our Orchards are a pollinator paradise during blossom season and provide leftover fruit for birds, mammals, and insects. They contribute to habitat connectivity, sustaining wildlife in fragmented landscapes. 

Orchards are a mosaic habitat

The habitat contains elements of woodland, pasture, meadow grassland, is often bordered by hedgerows and can also include areas of scrub. As good as each of these habitats are on their own, they combine in an orchard to create a wildlife haven more than the sum of its parts. These vegetation types add to the plant diversity and create a mosaic of habitats to support a vast range of species.

Orchard trees and dead wood

Wood decay is part of the natural ageing process of a tree, and old fruit trees have a particular way of aging with hollow trunks, cracks in bark and rot holes that provide an incredible habitat for all manner of invertebrates, fungi, birds, bats, and other small mammals. Standing decaying wood is one of the most valuable elements of the orchard habitat.

In time, internal deadwood decays to a soil-like substance known as wood mould, or saproxylic humus. This accumulates in the cavities where the protection it affords from the worst of the elements maintains a consistent temperature and humidity that is essential for sheltering mammals, nesting bats and birds, and many rare beetle and fungi. Enriched by the animal droppings, feathers, bones, and other detritus, this develops over the period of decades.

If there is risk of water penetration into a cavity, prevent the loss of the dry standing deadwood habitat by capping cavities with old tiles, slabs of wood, or even roofing felt. Collect loose detritus and transfer it into other cavities to provide habitat continuity.

Ageing trees naturally die-back and begin to hollow out helping them to remain standing, recycling nutrients and ultimately thriving for longer. Dead and decaying wood, therefore, does not necessarily mean that a tree is in poor health. It will still be able to survive and produce fruit for many years to come whilst providing valuable habitat.

A well-managed established orchard has mixture of tree ages. Young trees allow plenty of light to reach the grassland and older trees provide shelter and food thus further adding to the diversity of habitat available for nature.

Unimproved grassland

The grasslands in many traditional orchards have been undisturbed for decades if not longer and have escaped agricultural improvement. This benefits the plant diversity in grasslands found common traditional orchards, Both the nitrogen and the phosphorous from fertilisers contribute to the loss of. Woodland and meadow wildflowers are often species adapted to nutrient poor soil and are more sensitive to these nutrients. In some cases, this sensitivity means the addition of fertiliser is directly toxic to them.

It is not only plant diversity that is directly affected by nutrient enrichment, but it also reduces the diversity of mycorrhizal fungi in the soil. As nearly 80% of plants require these mycorrhizal fungi to thrive, this can add to the loss of plant diversity.

Orchards occur on a wide range of soil types from acidic infertile soils to fertile river floodplains and lime rich soils. This influences the plant communities that grow, and so also affects the invertebrates you can find.

Each orchard is a unique refuge for wildlife. Together, we are making a difference to help tackle climate change.