Still more apple trees being moved in Somerset

[yummersetter]

It looks as if there are still hundreds of trees remaining at the old Scott's Nurseries sites in South Somerset. In this newspaper article This is Somerset they says that help is needed this week to move 150 trees of 30 varieties of cider trees to a new home near Glastonbury and that many of the eating apples are being shifted to Scotland. They will now be at least seven year old trees so getting near the limit for transplanting, I'd say - one would have thought that starting new trees by grafting from the originals would be simpler.

[Thelma Sanders]

Could the originals be on their own roots?

[yummersetter]

No, each planting area is on a different rootstock - I bought 40 varieties from N to R alphabetically, grafted on mm106 a couple of years ago and they moved well, but it was hard work digging them up and replanting them. I've kept the original auction catalogue which really shows what a resource it could have been.

[veggiechicken]

Villagers at Hinton St George plan to create a community wood on the old nursery land, to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Read more: Cider maker Frank Naish collects rare varieties of apple trees for replanting at Piltown Farm near Glastonbury | This is Somerset
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Its a shame that they're not creating a community orchard on this land

[yummersetter]

The big shame is that the Scotts collection of fruit trees didn't become the Brogdale of the Southwest.

[boundtothesoil]

many of the eating apples are being shifted to Scotland.

Any idea of where in Scotland, or to whom? Maybe it's to a heritage variety conservation group with similar intentions to Brogdale.

I guess that there are still too few people truly interested in conserving/sustaining old orchards and varieties compared with the number of sites/trees remaining at risk of obliteration. And when someone buys a property with the remnants of an old orchard, more often than not I imagine the trees are uprooted to make way for some other use.

[yummersetter]

No I know no more than the (slightly garbled) newspaper article. It seems like a big change of climate, possibly. These aren't old orchards but nursery fields, mainly in the countryside, with lots of rows of maybe a hundred trees planted by variety about a foot apart.
I did rescue half a dozen out of a couple of hundred from one of the fields that was going to have all the trees bulldozed out so it could be used as a pony paddock, but that's getting to be less of an option as time goes by - we drove home (carefully, down the back lanes) with fifteen foot trees then, a couple of years ago

[SarzWix]

Its a shame that they're not creating a community orchard on this land

This ^

They might not all have been able to stay, due to planting density, but a heck of a lot of them could!

[Jardiniere]

Scotts Nurseries used to belong to a distant relative - they went bust. Will ask my sister if she knows anything.

[yummersetter]

I'm very interested in the original John Scott, who founded the nursery, if your connection goes that far back. I did know the Wallaces who were the last owners.