‘If I knew the world would go to pieces I would still plant my apple tree’ attributed to Martin Luther
August has been a month of saying our final goodbyes to the home in London where for over 30 years my children were growing up through nursery, primary school and secondary schooling to young adults. All through that time there were constants. They tell me a home /house which gave security and a garden with a very old apple tree. In fact a garden which could be more like an orchard as there was also a tall pear tree and a plum tree along the back fence.
There has been some fun, sadness and a sense of loss as we finally move away forever, even though over recent years I have spent less time there. Since being in our woodland at Navasola, trees have become very important to us. So as we move on I want to pay homage to our family home, apple tree and a wonderful man who I call the Apple Man otherwise known as Barry Potter. Barry visited us in Spain and gave helpful advice about our trees there, and in 2019 with the help of a book he was involved in writing, he identified our old apple tree. Below is the illustration from the book; A Yorkshire Greening apple tree. Sadly, Barry suddenly died in 2020, a good friend to Trevor, trees, and of course his family who miss him terribly. The world too has lost an amazing fount of knowledge. But some of his vast expertise lives on in his writing in this book: The Northern Pomona.
Below are extracts from Barry’s part of the book on ‘Old Orchards’ and ”Restoring Orchards’. This was an area of Barry’s expertise and as I re read over the restoring orchard section he was also a champion of wildlife and he gives some interesting facts about creating different habitats by different levels of mowing in an orchard. So it seems not advisable to just let all the grass grow long as our local council did under ‘No Mow’. Different creatures appreciate different heights of the grass.
Barry refers to plants like self-heal – prunella vulgaris which thrive in shorter grass and that mowing paths can create a diversity of micro habitats. He also has an interesting section on the larvae of butterflies and the plants they need. And I missed this, on looking at the book earlier; it seems that in many of the Latin names of butterflies there is reference to the plant the larva thrives on.
The description of a Yorkshire Greening variety is that it was also called Yorkshire Goose sauce. It was included in a catalogue in 1769 by someone from Pontefract. The comment is that it might not suit our more modern tastes but was very tart, rich and dense when cooked and worked wonders at Christmas with goose and apple sauce. I can vouch our tree’s apples make very good apple puree, crumble and chutney.
Our apple tree and garden created a ‘lush’ environment for wildlife and a lot of carbon capture over the years. Perhaps quite important when you live under the Heathrow flight path. I wonder if ours and the neighbours very green gardens were noticed by all the air travellers coming in to land. It certainly shows up on google earth. In Spring the blossom on the apple tree would usually come after the plum and the pear giving continuity for pollinators. In the summer the leaves would unfurl from light greens to darker shades and then small apples would form. In Autumn these apples could be quite large and quite a task to collect them all. Blackbirds and redstarts, starlings and more rare thrushes have been seen over the years pecking at the rotting fruit on the ground. Woodpeckers, goldfinch, Long tail tits and the tiny wren all have lived around this tree. More recently parakeets have started to visit and peck at the apples in the tree while red kites join the aeroplanes over the Heston/Heathrow skies. Wildlife can flourish in big cities if there are enough trees, hedges, wildlife friendly gardens and green spaces. It makes a healthier environment for all species including the destructive one!
Our tree in London does takes us back to some of our Yorkshire ancestors. And all cultivated apple trees take us back thousands of years to the middle of Asia, Kazakhstan, in apple woods outside the city of Almaty. Since then the apple has travelled the Silk routes, engaged with the Romans and come to Britain in various ways. But how and when did the wild apple seed in Kazakhstan? This seems like a creation story is needed!
In the UK it seems the monasteries saved the cultivated apple from less civilised invaders and up until the late 1900s apple orchards with so many varieties flourished. Barry’s book shows details of many of the English varieties but it seems there are over 7500 worldwide. Humans working with nature to create good food and a beautiful variety of trees.
About the time our house in London was built as part of a garden suburb in the 1920s the orchards were being taken for building and the land our house was built on was old orchard. I wonder if our tree was young then and finally left all alone. Or maybe it was planted by the first owners. It was a big mature tree 30 years ago when we moved in. We were only the second owners and the apple tree was a pleasure to be responsible for. Our family cat when on his first outing in the garden in 1999 went straight to the tree and climbed it. A great vantage point. It seems an apple tree could live over a hundred years but might not produce so much fruit in its later life.
As apples and their varieties were to become less of a staple of our UK daily diets, orchards and their mixed habitats disappeared. We hope the next owner will preserve this tree, although sadly it is showing signs of age. It is a shame that all these apple varieties and orchards have declined. Perhaps we should heed the old advice ‘ an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ as this has now been backed up by scientific evidence as to the healthy immune supporting chemicals in apples – polyphenols and fibre.
Knowing that we were leaving the house my younger daughter wanted to move as many of the precious plants she had grown there. Over the last 10 years since I retired to Navasola she became the gardener. When we knew the moving date she set to work in ‘dismantling’ her garden. But there was no way to move the apple tree or the abutilon, a beautiful lantern flowering evergreen around the gazebo frame. She wanted to get as many cuttings as possible and also went up the apple tree to try layering. I would have valued Barry’s advice on this. One method is to cut stems and leave them in the fridge and then graft onto a quince stock. My daughter tries a layering technique and we do have some roots on some of these. It will only be next year that we will really find out if we have been successful.
The garden in recent years has grown with many lovely flowers and dahlias a speciality. When my older daughter visited with my grandchildren there were paddling pools, swings from the trees and the garden was alive with young voices again.
As my daughter referred to dismantling her garden I remember some years ago when she was in her teens I wrote a poem about ‘ Dismantling Childhood’. It was based on looking out and seeing her dismantling the climbing frame, no longer needed for climbing, den, imaginative play. I was losing their childhood.
Perhaps it is me who now looks back at the nest and the day the removals van came when it was all emptied into the back of a big lorry and we closed the door for the final time.
And the future – More trees and a brook at the end of the garden somewhere in the middle of England. And maybe one day a Yorkshire Greening will grow there too near the alders along the bank, and with the dahlias and all kinds of flowers for the birds and bees
I am thinking my next post should be about the books that have opened my mind to the amazing world of trees and probably influenced my own writing.
Wildwood by Roger Deakin – Founder of Friends of the Earth – He goes to visit the wild apple trees in Kazakhstan among many of the fascinating chapters which are all tributes to tress and wood.
The Overstory’ by Richard Powers. It is indeed the War and Peace epic about trees.
In my novel ‘The Call of the Wild Valley’, trees certainly feature but also the apple tree and our family cat are inspiration for one chapter providing the possibility of good habitats for bumble bees if not bee-eaters.
http://www.navaselvathecallofthewildvalley.com/
This link is to the last post of Part One but you can still go back to the beginning or where you left off and it can also be listened to if you click the audio links. You may need google as the audio is on a google drive. Update on publishing is that all is going well. I have completed my author proof read and the for my novel is that format and illustrations look good. The book cover may feature the bee-eater.
So sorry for not blogging much or keeping up with you all but it has been one of the most busy months and an emotional rollercoaster of love, loss memories and new beginnings.
Fare Well Apple tree and Barry Potter. May you live on in all the many ways you know how to. Much loved and much missed.
NavasolaNature 