Kingswear Parish Council has agreed to a site for a Community Orchard for the parish.

The orchard will hold about 20 trees and in October the site will be cleared and the first trees will be planted between November and February, in the dormant season.

Cllr Lucy Payne and the tree warden for Kingswear, Alan Payne have potentially already got six apple trees for the orchard.

They visited the Dartmouth Community Orchard to take cuttings from some of the 130 trees there. There were over 50 different varieties of apple to chose from.

Cllr Payne and the tree warden selected some cooking, dessert and cider varieties to take to an Orchard Link course on chip budding.

This is an old technique for propagating trees in which a slither of the clipping is inserted into a matching notch on a rootstock. The rootstock determines the growth characteristics of the tree and the clipping which determines the variety of apple.

Chip budding can be done between mid-summer and early autumn, meaning that now is the right time of year.

Peter Shaw, chairman of the Friends of Dartmouth Community Orchard said: “It’s great that a new orchard is being created in Kingswear and we wish it every success.

‘It’s particularly pleasing that now there will be a genetic link between the new orchard in Kingswear and the special old orchard in Dartmouth.”

Cllr Payne and Alan said: “We are hoping the orchard will have a variety of fruit trees and are now recruiting residents who would like to contribute ideas about how to develop the orchard as well as participating in this exciting project.”

Any interested peoples should contact them at [email protected] or on 01803 752340.

The orchard will be on a disused allotment site in the north east corner of Jubilee Park, to the right of the car gate entrance.