Become a member

Join the Wolvercote Tree Group if, like us, you want to ensure trees and shrubs continue to play a vital role in making our community more beautiful, improving wellbeing and combating climate change.

We always need champions to care for the trees we already have, and to plant The Wolvercote Tree Group (founded in more. We appreciate help in maintaining 1993) promotes the importance of trees as the Community Orchard and preparing for guardians of our environment . Apple Day our main fundraising event. Trees are a vital part of our natural Members enjoy other orchard events WOLVERCOTE world. They give us oxygen, store carbon, during the year including Wassail Night stabilize the soil and give food, shelter and and the Blossom Day Picnic. A regular TREE GROUP life to millions of plant and animal species. newsletter highlights upcoming activities, Trees create a feeling of wellbeing, workdays and events. greening our urban landscapes. Because promoting the wellbeing of they may be long-lived, trees are often Download a membership form from planted as living memorials. www.wolvercote.org/the-tree-group or trees & shrubs, maintaining phone the Membership Secretary on 01865 559316. a community orchard, & tree planting in and around Wolvercote Wolvercote Tree Group is managed by a steering committee comprising a chair, vice- chair, treasurer, secretary and up to six members. Volunteers to join the committee are always welcome. Contact the Membership Secretary for details. Registered address: 59 Rosamund Road, Wolvercote, OX2 8NX. John Thompson (1941-2015) planted the The Community Orchard Apple Day WTG seed. His life’s mission was to create Supermarkets and shops show little Apple Day has always been an beautiful tree-lined spaces for the benefit evidence of the UK’s 2000-plus apple important date in the orchard’s calendar. of local communities and wildlife. He varieties. With this in mind, we aimed to proposed the Wolvercote Commoners create an orchard where some of these Committee appoint a Tree Warden. Peter forgotten, local varieties could be grown. Adams put his hand up and the WTG was Helped by children from the born. Wolvercote Wildlife Watch Group, the first 20 trees were planted in 1994. We now Tree Planting have over 50 varieties including the Early planting projects included the Bampton Fairing, Winter Greening, Annual Lower Green (1993) and Goose Green, Sweeting, Jennifer Wastie, Peggie’s Pride which won an environmental award in and Sergeant Peggie. We even have a 2006. Other initiatives involving the Tree Wolvercote Wonder. You’ll also find pears, Group included planting replacement black damsons, plums, quince and medlar trees. poplars alongside the River Thames and It’s the day we invite the local the Hurst Copse in Upper Wolvercote. John community to celebrate the humble apple. was hugely supportive when the WTG There’s apple tasting, fresh juice to sample wanted to turn unused allotments and buy, apple cakes and preserves. opposite the Trout Pub on Godstow Road Hugely popular are the old-fashioned into a community orchard (see opposite). games like the longest peel, conker It’s fitting that the 2019 planting of conquest, maggot in the apple and native tree and shrub species in Nixey’s Every year we give a basket of apples as treasure hunts. The numbers of people Field, sponsored by CALA Homes, ticks off rent to landowners Oxford Preservation who come along has grown and grown. We one of John’s last planting projects. Trust. now anticipate over 400 people every year.