Apple Trees

I have no specific recollection of the apple trees flowering in our garden when I was a child. It is strange, because I was naturally garden-minded from an early age, and certainly remember the blossom of the double pink hawthorn, which was very attractive, but did not have the virtue of producing fruit. It was not until I went to work at the RHS Gardens at Wisley in my early twenties, and saw an enormous and immaculately kept orchard for the first time, that I was struck by both the peerless beauty, and the painfully fleeting, nature of apple blossom. From then on, each spring has been a patient waiting for the red-pink buds to open.

We bought our present house on the strength of the full-size, distinctive, characterful apple trees (‘Bramley Seedling’, ‘Epicure’, ‘Newton Wonder’ and ‘King of the Pippins’) which were flowering on the April day when we first looked round. I am not exaggerating, I promise. Indeed, I closed my eyes to a lot of shortcomings in the house for the sake of those gnarled old trees. And, what is more, I don’t regret it. Every time I go outside at this time of year they give me a buzz of pleasure, and it saddens me the day that the blossom begins to fade.

I look out for apples in flower in all sorts of unlikely places. A journey along a dual carriageway is often momentarily improved by seeing a tree flowering on the verge. These are almost certainly the result of a long ago tossed away apple core. And I remember well an early May day in 1991, when my husband and I took our children for the first time to Twickenham to see our team, Northampton Saints, play Harlequins in the Pilkington Cup Final. We parked, astonishingly enough, in a grassy, semi-neglected orchard in the grounds of a hospital, and picnicked beside the car before the game. The pale pink petals fluttered down around us, their freshness reinforcing the pre-match hope and excitement. (We lost, but that did not diminish the lingering sense of enchantment; the next time we went, however, we searched in vain for the orchard, by then most likely buried under a supermarket car park.)

Three years later, at about the same time, I found myself in Normandy, talking to gardeners about their work for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I went to the cemetery at Hermanville, which had been a Norman apple orchard until it was hastily turned into a burial ground on D-Day + 1. The settled peace of the place was underscored by a scatter of crooked, lichen-encrusted, cider apple trees, their heads of blossom etched against a purple-black sky, the petals falling slowly through the air and settling, like pink snow, in the narrow beds in front of the dignified, uniform gravestones. Sheep and dairy cattle grazed just beyond the hedge and I wondered whether the families of all those soldiers from county regiments - the Staffordshire Yeomanry, the South Lancashire Regiment and the Shropshire Light Infantry – had derived any comfort from knowing that their boys were buried in a country orchard.

But tall, crooked apple trees are almost a thing of the past and it saddens me to think that later generations may not experience such generous blossom, seen against the sky. Many, if not most, of the apple trees sold these days are on what is called ‘semi-dwarfing’ or even ‘dwarfing’ rootstocks, which means that the trees barely grow taller than the gardeners who plant them. (A particular variety of apple will be grafted onto a rootstock, which dictates the vigour of the plant and the height it will get to.) For small gardens, these are the obvious choice, of course, especially if the gardener wants to grow more than one tree but, surely, there is still a place in many gardens for a full-grown orchard tree? This is one grown on a non-dwarfing MM111 or M25 rootstock, and preferably with the leading shoot pruned in such a way that two main trunks branch out quite low down, and provide good climbing practice for the outdoor child. Such a tree, ten or fifteen years down the line, will bring the precious gift of atmosphere to the garden. Indeed, it might even sell the house one day.

© Ursula Buchan, 2010

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