Lingering within the urban fabric of Chichester City Council's parish area, or on its fringes, are traces of working woodland and productive orchards. Newly established orchards date from 2011.

For centuries, trees were harvested - for building, for furniture, for fuel, for food. The Tannery in Westgate would have used oak bark for tanning (tree source unknown, the craft now at risk of dying out); timber would have fired the clay-tile kilns, such as in Orchard Street, Southgate, Eastgate and at Whitehouse Farm; trees/hedgerows would have marked boundaries, enclosed livestock and been considered universally useful. Even in the second half of the 20th century, kindling would have been collected and games played (conkers, for example, at least from the mid 19th century) and some cultural traditions persist (probably the most obvious being the use of holly, mistletoe and ivy at Christmas).

And across the city we have a scattering of road names that hint at their original landscape, like Orchard Street/Avenue/Gardens, Cherry Orchard Road, Oak Avenue/Close, Cedar Drive, Rew Lane, The Copse, Lime Close.

This page aims to introduce you to these places today. We hope to stir your curiosity for their heritage, ancient and modern; encourage you to visit and explore their contribution to our here-and-now; wonder at their future and how and in what form they can survive for future life. Please join us in celebrating Chichester City's Orchards and Copses!

Orchards

Section under development. In the meantime, here are useful links to explore, wherever you live/work/visit:

• People's Trust for Endangered Species has an ongoing orchard survey project. Find its inventory mapped here and learn more about the Traditional Orchard Survey. The project includes a wealth of online information, including for practical orchard management (Traditional Orchards - People's Trust for Endangered Species (ptes.org)).
• "Intended for orchard professionals and enthusiasts, fruitID has images, descriptors and DNA fingerprints for the common apple cultivars growing in the British Isles. Plums now have sufficient coding to be useful for identification. ... We are working on pears, and cobnuts but these are not ready for searching."
• The National Fruit Collection "is one of the largest fruit collections in the world and includes over 3,500 named Apple, Pear, Plum, Cherry, Bush fruit, Vine and Cob Nut cultivars. Located at Brogdale Farm, near Faversham (Kent), the collection is owned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and is part of an international programme to protect plant genetic resources for the future." The website has a wonderful Search facility, with entries detailing type of fruit; use (e.g. culinary, dessert, cider); variety (and alternative names); fruit shape, size, colouring (genetic fingerprint may be available); flowering time (dates for 10%/80% flowering and 90% petal fall); and picking time. To visit see Brogdale Collections. There is also a Fruit Identification service.
• Royal Horticultural Society members can take advantage of its free fruit identification service. Its orchard at Wisley "is home to 175 pear, 100 plum and almost 700 apple cultivars".
• The Orchard Project explains why orchards are priority habitats under the UK's Biodiversity Action Plan. The Orchard Project is the national charity for community orchards. Its website includes guides and advice.
• The Marcher Apple Network is a charity which strives to revive and protect old varieties of apples and pears so that the unique characteristics are preserved, particularly focussed on the Welsh Marches. It too has lots of information Resources available to read online. (To marvel at, its Autumn 2012 newsletter reports that an ancient perry pear tree in Holme Lacey, Hereforshire is said to have created a canopy, in 1790, covering three-quarters of an acre as a result of its branches rooting!)
• More locally, Brighton Permaculture Trust champions Sussex apples and BPT's Peter May has worked with Transition Chichester to stock its Oaklands Park Community Orchard and support volunteer pruning days.
• Peter grows and sells apple, pear, plum damson and quince trees: see Sussex Apple Trees.
• Many fruit trees are in fact a combination of two different trees: a rootstock (usually chosen to control the size of the fully-grown tree, but also can be selected for soil suitability and disease resistance) which provides the roots and lower trunk of the tree; and a canopy grown from a scion (effectively a cutting from another tree) grafted onto that rootstock to provide the fruiting characteristics of its source tree. Explanations of rootstock characteristics are given on the websites of growers (such as Frank P Matthews here) and relevant organisations (such as the RHS here).
• The Tree Council hosted an excellent webinar "Grafting and Propagation for Beginners - grow your own trees from cuttings" on 4th October 2023. Link to the recording to be added when available.
• The NIAB (now known by its initials but originally the National Institute of Agricultural Botany) hosts and updates an Apple Best Practice Guide for commercial growers,
• whilst the Woodland Trust's website entry for Orchards focuses on wildlife.
• The Tree Council (which runs the national volunteer Tree Warden scheme) is one of several organisations offering support and free orchard trees. Visit its Orchards for Schools project to find out the application window, but also for pupil-appropriate tree health and growth monitoring sheets.

Orchards in Chichester

Click through to discover the where, what and why of the orchards you can visit in Chichester today.

1. Oaklands Park Community Orchard
2. Whyke Community Orchard, also described here on Transition Chichester's website.
3. A collaboration with Hyde (social housing provider) saw 5 fruit trees planted in public open spaces in Kingsham (Cherry Orchard Road, Kingsham Avenue) in Spring 2023, as part of a pilot orchard-creation project in which Chichester District Council was involved with DEFRA. At the time of writing, this new orchard-in-the-community is so new, it does not yet have a name!

Additionally, the PTES map indicates that there was an orchard in Graylingwell:

"WSUS0799

Ground truthed: N
Additional polygon notes: Large traditional orchard. Trees in rows. Very gappy.
Area (Ha): 0.933"

The modern-day map puts this in an area since redeveloped.

It also includes a relict site (less than 5 trees) in Bishops Palace Garden:

"WSUS0682

Ground truthed: Y
Marginal_code: Relict
Additional polygon notes: Relict. Only two apple trees remaining.
Mown: Y
Area (Ha): 0.055"

It is likely there are more ancient* fruit trees lingering in the gardens of homes across the city, and there's certainly one just inside the north-western entrance to Priory Park (in the quiet area, just to the right of the path after entering from Priory Lane). Do let us know, if you spot one.

* an ancient tree is one showing characteristics of aging that make it interesting biologically, aesthetically or culturally; in its third or final stage of its life (this stage can go on for decades or centuries); old relative to others of the same species.

 (Source: Ancient Tree Inventory)

Copses

• Section under development.

Copses in Chichester

• Section under development.