While not political, there was something very William Wallace about the task tonight, with FREEDOM being the aim of the game to help with the maintenance of fruit trees in Philips Park 🌳

While Dennis was on his way, we weeded what we could around the fruit trees, with lots of grasses taking up the space within the cages.

Once the tools arrived the real work could begin. With a bespoke allen key 🔑 we unscrewed the attachments holding the cage to the stakes, giving more breathing space to the apple 🍎 and pear 🍐 trees in the park. It also freed up more room to thoroughly weed, give them a lot of water, and reduced the wire from the cages digging in and causing damage to the growing branches.

Fanette and Ben managed to do this for most of the trees, with a few trips back and forth to collect water 💧 and managing to keep the screws and cages for later use. The pile of weeds and grass were disposed off around the park. The cherry 🍒 tree just had a good watering, having not grown too much with some of the dead branches removed. Other pruning tasks will be for another day.

Meanwhile, Sanjeev and Dennis focused on one of the leaning apple trees, in an attempt to support it and straighten it up. With the lack of rain and clay soil, making a hole for a new stake took a bit of trial and error. With a hammer 🔨, manual hand earth auger drill (basically a big screw tool), and a bit of water, they did finally get a couple of holes in to apply stakes, held in place by loose stones. Sustainable engineering certainly at play, using loose stones, a wobble, and manual tools to provide the support with no power tools or concrete in sight 🌱🌳💪

With the fruit trees uncaged, cleared, watered, and grasses disposed, we cleared up, seeing the orchard before their Britain in Bloom judging in August. The walk and run back along the Ashton canal was a pleasant warm down after a productive session 👏 well done all!