We’ve been fortunate to benefit from a Seed and Development Grant from Fife Climate Hub to begin the journey of restoration of the Fruit Terrace as a growing and event space at Monimail Tower Project. The Terrace had become overgrown in recent decades and much of it was inaccessible. With the help of the grant we are now in a situation where the Terrace is again useable, and replanting fruit trees has begun.
The grant covered hiring a large brush mower and stump grinder to flatten the area and make sure that no large vegetation, which can damage the walls and the fruit trees, can regrow.
The Fruit Terrace dates from about 200 year ago and is on the outside of the east face of the orchard walled garden. The Terrace is about 10m wide and 120m long. Looking at the wall the evidence of that 200 years of fruit trees is clear – the wall is full of nails where fruit trees were trained over decades. Nails and ties created horizontally-branched espalier forms and fans.
Our grant budget stretched to some new apples, a quince and some plums. All were chosen of semi vigorous rootstocks so should fill the large walls well. We’ll train the apples and quince as espaliers and the plums as fans.
The trees should start cropping the fruit in 5 years or so. We have an Apple Day in late October each year so keep an eye on our website if you fancy coming.
The Terrace along with the Walled Gardens is part of a designed landscape. An interesting feature of the Terrace that is now becoming clear is that it was designed to be rabbit and deer free. The Terrace itself has a 2m retaining wall (ie. a drop of 2m) to woodland and at either end there are walls, fencing and gates. We’re also working to restore these to working order so that we can prevent deer damage to the newly planted fruit trees.
The rest of the Terrace is going to be used as an event space and perhaps camping for events.
The grant also funded the reskinning of one of our communal garden polytunnels. The old polythene had become torn and dilapidated. A group of 15 volunteers dug out the old polythene anchoring trench and fitted a new skin as well as rebuilding all the wooden framing at the ends. Result – a good-as-new polytunnel which will be producing food again this year.
And we finished gathering around fire, food and cider to celebrate the return of the light and all the hard work
