In The Orchards At Brogdale
Years ago when I first visited the National Collection of Fruit Trees at Brogdale outside Faversham in Kent to enjoy the spring blossom, I vowed to go back in the autumn to admire the crop. This year, I fulfilled my ambition in the company of Contributing Photographer Rachel Ferriman and we were blessed with a golden afternoon in the North Kent Fruit Belt.
Nothing prepared me for the seemingly infinite variety of fruit that exists in nature. Walking into an orchard of two-thousand-two-hundred varieties of apple, all in fruit, is a vertiginous prospect that is only compounded by your guide who informs you this is merely a fraction of the over ten thousand varieties in existence.
What can you do? Your heart leaps and your mind boggles at the different colours and sizes of fruit. You recognise russets, laxtons and allingtons. Even if you had all day, you could not taste them all. Despite the cold spring, it has been a good year for apples. You stand wonderstruck at the bounty and resilience of nature. Then you start to get huffy at the pitiful few varieties of mostly-bitter green apples available to buy in shops, always sold unripe for longer shelf life. How is this progress?
Yet this thought evaporates as you are led through a windbreak into another orchard where five hundred varieties of pear are in fruit. By now your vocabulary of superlatives has failed you and you can only wander wide-eyed through this latter day Eden.
That afternoon there was no-one there but me, Rachel and the guide. We were delighted to have the orchards to ourselves. But this is when you realise the world has gone mad if no-one else is interested to witness this annual spectacle that verges on the miraculous. Walking on, as if in a medieval dream poem, you discover an orchard of medlars and another of quinces.
By now, your feet are barely touching the ground and you hatch a plan – as you munch an apple – to return at this same time of year, decide upon your favourite varieties and then plant your own orchard of soft fruit. When you stumble upon such an ambition, you realise that life is short yet we are all still permitted to dream.
Medlars
Quince
Plum
Mike Austen, our guide
Photographs copyright © Rachel Ferriman
The National Collection of Fruit Trees at Brogdale
You may like to read about my first visit
Gorgeous photos, I hope you carried off some to enjoy.
After the daily bombardment of flood, famine, fire, and humankind’s inhumanity, there is absolute balm in these photos. Earth’s bounty endures, if we only allow it.
The images evoke for me the Midas legend, or Dutch still-life paintings… or just astonishment at the beauty and glory of a tree in full fruit.
Thank you for adding something beautiful to my morning.
Nature is indeed wonderful! And so is Brogdale.
But don’t get the wrong idea, every single apple variety there is a human bred construct, as are the plums. The only truly natural variety of plum is the sloe.
Brogdale is a tribute to human ingenuity, but not to nature.
Magical, as always–so well-written and great photography–many thanks for reminding us of the wonder of nature.
It reminds me of Oaklands College in St Albans where I went from the East End to attend as a student, thanks to the Welfare of a black cab taxi driver who guided me and encouraged me to fill in the forms .
I wish I could’ve found him again for you was unique like an angel and thanks to him. I filled in those forms and stood beside those kind of trees even helping prune them with a power tool plugged in to a tractor,
I hope these words inspire people even someone like me left School with no qualifications could get that kind of help and make something of their lives
Beautiful! I too dream of planting an orchard. How lovely that would be.