We have boundaries

Over December 6th and 7th boundary work on the orchard was completed thanks to a large and coordinated community effort.

The team from Barclays

The team from Barclays Bank

On the Friday, the team from Barclays Bank did a tremendous job and planted out hundreds of hedging plants along the entirety of the eastern boundary. Barclays also generously funded some of the equipment we needed to do all the planting. A big thank you to all involved.

HICOP volunteers

The HICOP volunteers

The following day it was the turn of the HICOP volunteers to complete the boundary by planting 500+ hedging plants along the arc boundary. We were delighted to see lots of new faces alongside the regulars. The arc boundary also include 9 fruit trees (a mix of pear, plum and cherry), which were also planted by the volunteers. A brilliant effort all round by a group of volunteers ranging from school age to retired – a proper community effort.

Fitting in

There’s still a lot of work to be done on the orchard, but having all of the hedging in place now is a great goal to have reached and – while everyone involved feels justifiably pleased to have got this far as quickly as we have – we are aware that we couldn’t have done it without an enormous amount of community involvement.

As well as the HICOP volunteers and the Barclays team, getting the boundary work done also involved a huge amount of effort from a volunteer team from GE Energy, the generosity of Chivers Farms – especially Caroline Chivers and Phil Scott – who provided fencing materials and the invaluable time and experience of Phil, and The Woodland Trust who provided a lot of the native hedge plants.

The fencing will be removed once the hedge plants are robust enough to no longer need the protection.

More photos