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New Dawn for Community Orchard
Four and a half years ago, Lynsted with Kingsdown Parish Council won a grant to create a community orchard. With the generous support of owners Pip and Sue Neaves, this three-year national lottery funding enabled the traditional cherry orchard at Park Farm to be equipped with vehicle- and disabled access, and colourful panels explaining the history of cherry growing in the area to be put in place. Many readers will have enjoyed events – Halloween Parties, Blossom Days, Opera Evening, Barn Dance, Cherry Days – that became possible in the wonderful ‘community space’. Children from Lynsted and Norton School were closely involved in the creation of ‘The Wonder of Life’, a wooden sculpture ‘focal point’, and have held their own activities in the Orchard. Secondary students from Fulston Manor School provided the artwork for the interpretation panels. An informative booklet on cherries, and cherry recipes and a set of colour leaflets have been produced. An attractive website features a ‘virtual tour’ of the Orchard at www.lynsted-orchard.org.uk.
Traditionally managed orchards attract their own wildlife communities, and local people have been involved with studies on fungi, moths, bats and birds. The Orchard has even become a sanctuary for slow-worms evicted from other, building, sites in the locality!
The main aims have been to foster an interest in our traditional cherry growing heritage, and raise awareness about orchard wildlife. These have been broadly met. Hundreds of people have now experienced the special atmosphere of a traditional cherry orchard – a once very common Kentish environment that is now rapidly disappearing. The grant allowed the purchase of cameras and recording equipment, and training on their use. A library of pictures of scenes past and present has been built up, and a start has been made on recording the cherry-related experiences of senior residents.
The Parish Council, with valuable support from the Mid Kent Downs AONB Unit, has therefore been able to create a Community Orchard to be proud of.
It was generally agreed that the time has now come for the management of the Community Orchard to pass from the Parish Council to the community itself. At the Parish Council meeting on 3rd March it was unanimously resolved that their Orchard Committee should be discontinued, and Project should become independent. This was felt by members to be a natural development. By the time you read this, an Inaugural Open meeting will have been held and a Steering Committee formed, from local residents. This team will take the Orchard Project forward, not only as a developing community resource locally, but also as part of a network of traditional orchard projects now forming across the county. There is a great deal to be achieved in this highly worthwhile area.
Anyone who would like to help in any way with this orchard initiative is welcome to contact me in the first instance.
Bob Baxter,
Interim Coordinator,
Park Farm Community Cherry Orchard, Lynsted. Phone 521 515.
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