Developing a fruitful future for all young Scots (and some older ones)

We have held apple days in Holyrood and have done our best to publicise the potential of school orchards to delivery social community and educational benefits. This has been successful in a piecemeal manner – but it would be our ambition to see as many Scottish School children as possible able to benefit from having fruit growing – regardless of where they live, or whether their school grounds have suitable grounds for planting. We have shown that even very inner city schools, such as Royal Mile Primary, in Central Edinburgh next to the Scottish Parliament, have been able to plant fruit trees in large planters. We have also worked with many community groups, housing associations and some local authorities to find suitable land in parks, social housing areas, or in general landscaping which can be planted by schools with help from the local community.
We have met with Scottish Government officials and also Glasgow City Council officials with a view to getting official backing from the Commonwealth Legacy, but for a variety of reasons this has not proved successful.
We have also input into the Scottish Government’s Grow Your Own Working Group – and have submitted papers to this group explaining the value of Orchards to the Grow Your own agenda – and also put forward the Commonwealth Orchard there, but this has not been translated into official recommendations for Grow Your Own.