The orchard is buzzing away with a new apiary managed by “bee man” Paul Wheeldon. We have two hives, both from local suppliers, and both busily occupied. Steve Lewis and the crew from the council very kindly constructed the protective cage around the hives.

The hives are placed so that the bees enter and exit through the side closest to the stone wall. This means that they should fly up and over the hives, and away from the ground.

The bees seem to be settling nicely into their new home, and we’re happy to have them here!

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Thanks to everyone who came! It was a great day - we estimate around 300 people came through the gates and enjoyed the beautiful weather. There are a few more pictures on our Facebook page - I was personally too busy to take many, as I was helping out with the archery - which was certainly well attended! I’ll see if the other volunteers got any photos, and put them up soon.

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Local  photographer Pat Stanway currently has an exhibition featuring many images of the orchard in New Mills Library. If you can’t make it to the library, you can click on the image above to browse Pat’s online gallery.

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Some great new pictures in the gallery from Pat Sanway - showing the blossom, and the bees hard at work.

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Loads of pictures from friend of the Orchard Pat Stanway are now visible on this online gallery. Pat’s doing a great job of recording the progress of the orchard and the wide diversity of wildlife that is there already.

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When I was first researching how we might install signage at the orchard, I looked at the various commercially available options. They were all fairly bland and uninteresting, unless you wanted to pay a fortune for something bespoke. I thought a better approach would be to try something more rustic. At the time we had Geoff from GD Garden Services helping us with our garden, a major part of which was manhandling oak sleepers to form raised beds and seating. This made me think it would be quite impressive to use sleepers to mount the signage - but they had two major drawbacks:

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We have put some horses on the lower part of the orchard site to help with the management of some of the dense undergrowth, to facilitate later planting in that area.

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