Training and events

As well as providing training to our orchard leaders to look after the new community orchards, we also hold the occasional training day open to the public. These days are one-day introductory courses, entitled ‘Everything you need to know about growing fruit trees in urban spaces’, and are held in the summer. We are also hoping to be able to offer workshops on specific technical skills, such as formative and maintenance pruning. Check our homepage to find out more about our upcoming courses, as well as courses run by some other London organisations that may be of interest. In the summer of 2010, we also held some urban harvesting training events, with Abundance Sheffield, Organic Lea and the Campaign for Real Cider.

We also hold harvest celebration events in the autumn, in particular Apple Day on 21st October. Apple Day is a celebration that was founded by Common Ground in 1990, as a new calendar custom for the apple and orchard to “take their rightful place in our culinary and cultural lives once more”.

We have a crusher and a juicer that can be used by community groups for their own harvest celebrations and events, provided we're not using it! 

Please Contact us if you would like to find out more about borrowing this equipment.

"I went to the event on Saturday with a friend and it was great! She is now going to plant an apple tree in her garden thanks to your tips"

Thank you very much for the workshop, it was very well delivered and I hope we will continue working together.I am very in ‘orchard spirit’ after our session, so tomorrow our volunteers and I will focus on fruit trees maintenance in nature area.

Really enjoyed the training last weekend, it was very interesting and will no doubt prove useful in the months and years to come!

“My expectations were exceeded….everything seems possible and straightforward!”

“It was amazing, packed full of interesting facts!”

“The trainer was amazingly good. It was very clear, he went at the right pace and had fantastic personal knowledge”

“Excellent! I have learnt a lot.”

"It has been a very fulfilling day with plenty of information to help us with our first orchard project"