Alongside GGLT’s main role of researching and protecting our historic gardens and landscapes we also have a role to tell our local communities about them.
This can be in various ways, from involving schools and gardening clubs with visits and talks to enable them to play an active part in protecting our county heritage, or by embracing the more peripheral but still important parts of the county’s gardening history, such as orchards and allotments.
Our current project is focussed on the county’s tradition of orchards and local fruit varieties, by liaising with the Gloucestershire Orchards Trust to enlist volunteers to help map the county’s old orchards; we are also starting to work with an inner city Gloucester community to plant heritage fruit trees in their area.
By engaging with local communities we will raise awareness of the county’s wonderful gardens in all their variety, from small town or cottage gardens to great decorative gardens and landscapes designed for both beauty and use for the benefit of all. If you would like to be involved in engaging with local communities to help us in our mission please contact us at [email protected].
Orchards in the Gloucestershire Landscape
An Orchard may be considered one of the earliest forms of garden, encapsulating the notion of beauty and use.
In the words of the 17th century agricultural reformer Samuel Hartlib, the universal planting of fruit trees would be ‘for the benefit and public relief of this whole nation… for the relief of the poor, the benefit of the rich, and the delight of all’.
Gloucestershire is part of the great West of England fruit region extending from Herefordshire and the West Midlands to Devon. Among British counties it takes sixth place for orchard acreage, with Kent, Worcester, Devon, Hereford and Somerset exceeding it’.

Thus the orchard section was introduced in S W E Vince’s report on The Land Utilisation Survey of Britain part 67, ‘Gloucestershire’, in 1942. There is much historical information about orchards to be gathered from this report and from other sources. At the same time, a survey in 2011 found that the county’s orchard acreage, whether apple, plum or cherry, had fallen since 1939 from 13,713 acres (5,550ha) to 3,759 acres (1,521ha), largely the result of orchards being swallowed up in building development.
A research project aims to add to knowledge of the present-day situation, at the same time helping to make known how orchards should be valued and protected for their biodiversity and beauty. It would be a great contribution by the Gloucestershire Gardens and Landscape Trust to make the county’s orchards more widely appreciated.