Craft centre near Bridgnorth branching out with orchard thanks to grant

Crowsmill Craft Centre in Alveley is creating the new orchard, thanks to funding from The Tree Council’s Branching Out Fund.  

Branching Out provides grants ranging from £250 to £2,500 in value to community groups, schools, small  registered charities, and Tree Warden Networks seeking to establish trees, hedgerows, and orchards throughout  the winter planting season.  

This year, Crowsmill Craft Centre successfully secured grant support through the Branching Out Fund and will be planting a variety of fruit and nut trees in the new green space of their existing provision, having successfully crowdfunded last year to develop the land for wildlife and community enjoyment, maintained with the help of their service users in land-management workshops.

The craft centre joint founder,  Dickon Pitt, said: “This grant award is very exciting to us. We had been hoping to landscape our new 3-acre site around an orchard, a structure around which we can increase biodiversity for a thriving ecosystem as well as providing a project for our workshop users in the growing and maintenance of the orchard, and for the public to enjoy the peaceful area to walk and picnic and enjoy our tranquil views. 

"An orchard also gives us a focus for community events going forward such as harvest time. Thanks to The Tree Council Branching Out Fund we are now making this a reality, and really looking forward to giving more people access to our wonderful site as it develops.” 

At Crowsmill Craft Centre in Alveley, near Bridgnorth, people with diverse and complex needs, experiencing physical and mental health difficulties, develop physical and social skills and build self-esteem through a variety of hands-on activities from woodworking to land-management. 

On February 25-26, service users at Crowsmill Craft Centre will be working together to plant their new orchard trees. 

The community of people ranging from youths to the elderly will take part in various ways, from the actual planting - involving learning how to stake and protect the young fruit trees - to feeding the field-team in the catering workshop, making the necessary pegs and stakes in the wood workshop, and creating displays in the arts and craft room. As the site develops and the weather warms up, all of our service users will have daily opportunities to enjoy the new greenspace. 

Prior to this, on February 18, a team of office colleagues from Clickingmad Ltd, a website design agency in Bridgnorth, will also be very kindly volunteering their time to help us start the orchard planting as a team-building exercise.

Now in its 18th year, Branching Out has supported hundreds of projects in communities throughout England,  Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, delivering new habitats for wildlife, and a green living legacy for residents  and visitors to enjoy. Tree Council Grants Officer, Geraldine Creaven said: “Branching Out presents a fantastic opportunity for schools and community groups large and small to get their spades in the ground and start establishing life enhancing and biodiversity boosting trees, hedgerows, and orchards in their neighbourhoods. 

“We’re so thrilled  for all our successful applicants, especially Crowsmill Craft Centre!”