Who are we and what do we do?

Colwall Orchard Group (COG) is a volunteer community group that supports people and nature.

We were set up in 2007 to restore, promote and celebrate traditional orchards and in the early days we did a lot of surveys and research. In 2011 we managed to acquire land to create a community orchard with allotments, now known as Colwall Village Garden, on Old Church Road. More recently we purchased land at Lugg’s Mill, just a bit further down the road, and have planted this as an orchard as well.

Both Colwall Village Garden and Lugg’s Mill are open to visitors and are easily accessed via Colwall's public footpath system.

COG is registered as a charity and a company limited by guarantee. We have a small team of voluntary Trustees who run the charity and we are supported by over 200 members, of which a roughly a quarter volunteer to help with practical land management tasks, to make produce to sell and to run our events. In total we estimate that nearly 7,000 volunteer hours are contributed each year! Other COG members, and the local community, provide valuable support through paying an annual membership fee, purchasing our produce and by coming along to events.

Here is a taster of some of the things we get up to:

• We look after our own land to showcase good land management practices for wildlife. This involves caring for our hedges and boundaries, creating a pond, looking after the community orchards, creating wildflower meadows and making new habitats for small mammals, birds, reptiles, insects and fungi.
• We welcome everyone who wants to visit our sites to relax and enjoy the environment and to see what we do. We also provide community activities such as practical volunteering and social events through-out the year.
• We work with other local landowners to create new or restore mature traditional orchards by funding and planting more trees, as well as pruning, harvesting fruit and managing mistletoe. We give advice to orchard owners to enhance the future health and condition of their orchards.
• COG started the Traditional Orchards for the Future Initiative (TOFI) in 2020 in partnership with the MHAONB and over two years we have planted over 200 trees to create new, or gap up existing, traditional orchards.
• We share our enthusiasm for orchards and wildlife by demonstrating and teaching practical orchard skills such as pruning and grafting, meadow creation and hedgerow management.
• We offer advice on orchards and on traditional fruit varieties and we help people to buy trees through our tree ordering scheme.
• We work with partners including the Malvern Hills AONB, the Malvern Hills Trust, the Parish Council, local schools and the parish church, to maintain and improve traditional orchards and other areas for wildlife.
• We run seasonal events to celebrate orchards, such as the Blossom Picnic, Wassail, Dawn Chorus, Mistletoe Fair, Apple Day and most recently have been involved in Herefordshire Art (H.Art).
• We run educational visits for local schools.
• We research our local orchard history which is celebrated in our Colwall Orchard Heritage Trail leaflet (available online and at the post office).
• We encourage others to grow organic fruit and vegetables on the allotment plots we rent. We use the produce we grow and harvest to make and sell apple juice, jam, honey and chutney. In 2020/21 over 400 jars of jam and chutney, together with over 500 litres of apple juice were made and sold by COG.

We are funded by our membership, sales of juice and preserves, tree dedications, allotment rent and from grants.

We hope this gives a little taster of what we’re all about – for more information please visit our website at colwallorchardgroup.org. Here you’ll find news of what we’ve been doing, along with details of all upcoming events, and information about how to buy our produce and how to get involved.

If you want to become a member for £6 a year, to support us and to keep in touch, please contact us at members@colwallorchardgroup.org.

If you want to get more involved we have many opportunities to volunteer ranging from fund raising and making grant applications, to helping to run our seasonal events, and coordinating our jam and chutney production from harvest to sales. We also run regular practical volunteering sessions every Friday morning from 10am to 1pm. For more details contact us at members@colwallorchardgroup.org.