March community orchard in people's own front gardens
The Front Garden Fruit Project has just been launched in the Fenland town, but already about 20 people have asked for a tree, said Ms Wilson.
"We've tried to set up a community orchard for some time but we had trouble securing land so we've come up with a new idea - a bit of a hybrid community orchard - where we are offering free fruit trees to March residents and in return they give us a bit of space to plant it in their front garden," she said."Eventually we're hoping that once the fruit trees are laden with fruit, that they might share some of this with the community."The varieties on offer "don't need a pollination partner and are very disease-resistant and tend to be very heavy-cropping varieties", said Ms Wilson.It could take one or two years before the trees produce fruit, but "in future years when you have many, many apples and pears and plums - and you've had enough crumbles - people who've been beneficiaries of the project might be willing to share a crate with the community".Ms Wilson said the project was bearing the cost of the trees with help from other charity grants, which come in at about £18 each, and the group would help with planting and provide free crates once the trees fruit.In the future, the group hopes to create a map so the local community can see where to collect fruit for free.
Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
4 days ago
- BBC News
The East Anglian artisans keeping their heritage crafts alive
Traditional skills - some of which have been around for millennia - are at risk of dying out because so few people practise them. Three artisans, whose heritage crafts are on a national Red List, have given their thoughts on what can be done to pass their skills to the next generation. 'We need to do manufacturing ourselves' Daniel Bangham is an endangered to national charity Heritage Crafts - which promotes and supports traditional UK crafts - there are "serious concerns" about the "ongoing viability" of his trade of 45 instrument making, which Mr Bangham does at his own workshop in Linton, Cambridgeshire, is among more than 90 crafts it classes as are just enough skilled craftspeople to keep the work going, and to educate others - for now - but more is needed to be done to safeguard its is clearly a demand for his work: top musicians still need bespoke instruments that are not mass-produced."Professional players depend on craftsmen to get the last five to 10% out of their instruments," said Mr Bangham."Without the instrument maker, you can't have musicians at the top of their game because a top musician will need constant contact with a maker and repairer to get the very best of their instruments." Manufacturing of woodwind instruments - as with many other things - has moved to East Asia, he says, but the reliance on imports needed to change. "As a nation we need to do primary manufacturing ourselves, everything from steel, through to making microscopes and musical instruments," he said."People will still want to hone their skills, but they have to be given the opportunity, the environment and the encouragement."Heritage Crafts has singled him out for praise for being one of the few people to take on years ago, he set up a workshop studio to teach skills to others."We have enabled 250 instruments to be made, and of those we have had four people who have become professional," he Mr Bangham believes the trade could die out because apprenticeships are "not easy or affordable"."Very often someone will go into a profession obliquely, they never thought they were going to go there," he said."They started making a small widget, found they would be good at it, then got more interested in the bigger picture and became a dedicated craftsman." 'You never stop learning' You may have seen examples of Ian Warren's craft, but perhaps not known what it is or moulded plasterwork - pargeting - is prominent in East Anglia and is used to create motifs of coats of arms, fruits, animals, or even entire scenes on has been a skilled craft in England since King Henry VIII brought in Italian plasterers to decorate one of his palaces. Mr Warren, who works out of Tillingham, near Southminster in Essex, is one of just 11 pargeters known to Heritage Craft. "You can see it around Lavenham and Clare [both near Sudbury in Suffolk], where they had men with more money," said Mr Warren."They had pargeting done to let everyone know that." Heritage Crafts believes the issues affecting pargeting include changing tastes in housing design and the strict restrictions imposed by conservation legislation. It can also be expensive and takes time, which does not correlate with competitive tendering Warren has seen all these problems, as well as commonly-used materials not being up to the task."Modern rendering is now resin, it's not sand, cement and lime anymore, it's prebagged and it doesn't lend itself to pargeting," he explained."Flat rendering is cheaper and some [building] designs are very boxy; it looks wrong on a modern house."Nevertheless, he is hopeful for the future. He has diversified by pargeting on to small panels which can be hung inside as works of art "that will last hundreds of years"."I've been doing it 35 years and I've never been out of work, but I have adapted by doing these smaller things," he said."I started doing panels to take to shows, and because I don't like going up scaffolding in the winter anymore."There are builders and developers, especially around here, that still want that look, it's sellable."Heritage Crafts points out that practitioners need "considerable artistic talent" and also want a labour-intensive is no training school, apprenticeships or courses beyond the occasional introductory day school."You never stop learning," said Mr Warren, who is self-taught. "I think you need to be like myself, you've got to be enthusiastic and work for yourself."You have to have a bit of artistic flair in the first place."I could teach someone to a standard, but they have to have that bit about them to take it on their own." 'People have done this for centuries' Mark Clifton's trade of flintknapping - the shaping of flint by "percussive force" - has been around since the Stone Age but could die out because of a skills shortage. Heritage Crafts says the work is "extremely challenging" - it requires technique, accuracy and good hand-eye Clifton, who works out of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, type of flintwork is for the building sector, with Mr Clifton breaking the stones to specific sizes and shapes to create a flush finish on walls. It is time consuming, back-breaking work, with few skilled people still doing it in the UK."I spend half my time on my knees, and as you get older it gets painful," he said."It's a very manual job."You break the flint in half and then you trim it to fit them around each other, and then fit into the wall." Churches and other heritage buildings need the real deal like Mr the shortage of craftsman - and lack of training opportunities - means that, elsewhere, cheaper walls are often created by pressing the stones into concrete as a "short cut", Heritage Crafts says. "Not enough people are getting into it," added Mr Clifton."There are just a handful of good ones, across the country."I fell into it... I'd never knapped in my life but had done whole stone, had slightly the wrong tools to begin with, and went from there. "It's quite a skill."He said he hoped its growing popularity as a feature of modern buildings could be its saviour, but colleges needed to offer courses. "It makes me sad that it could die out," he added. "People have been flintknappers for centuries. "When you think people would quarry flints and knap them at Grimes Graves [a prehistoric flint mine in Lynford, Norfolk]."I still might train someone; I've had apprentices in the past, they've stuck to the course, some have now done it for 28 years." Published annually by Heritage Crafts, the Red List categorises five skills as extinct, 70 as critically endangered and more than 90 as endangered."The Red List underscores the urgent need for greater investment and support to safeguard these skills for the next generation," said Daniel Carpenter, executive director of Heritage Crafts."Reversing this decline would represent not just the continuation of skilled trades, but also a significant boost to the UK's cultural heritage and countless opportunities for future innovation." Follow East of England news on X, Instagram and Facebook: BBC Beds, Herts & Bucks, BBC Cambridgeshire, BBC Essex, BBC Norfolk, BBC Northamptonshire or BBC Suffolk.
BBC News
29-07-2025
- BBC News
Families protest flower ban for graves in Haddenham cemetery
A widow said her husband would be "mortified" by a council decision to remove all flowers from graves. A parish council will make its village cemetery in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire, a "lawn only" space from September this year. Haddenham Parish Council said families would have until next Spring to remove plants and trinkets to promote a "uniform and dignified appearance for all graves".Viv Thistlethwaite, 74, said: "My husband loved flowers and doing the garden. If this move goes ahead myself and several others will continue planting flowers and just take the grass seed up." A lawn-only policy would mean graves need to be kept as flat, grass-covered plots with no personal items, flowers, or plants in the parish council said neighbouring areas like Willingham and Sutton had similar regulations to address "long-term issues" of overgrown or untended authority added the policy would prevent accidental damage to headstones, caused by the use of strimmers in tight spaces, and said contractors would be instructed to begin clearance after winter, when flowers were not in bloom. 'Heartache for families' Mrs Thistlethwaite's husband, Leslie, died in 2021. She also tends to five others at the cemetery, including her parents, aunt and uncle."I come up here every week with my lawnmower in a wheelbarrow and I cut around Leslie's plot and his mate's grave next door, who he used to go to football with," she said. Mandy Amory, 61, from Needingworth tends to three graves in the cemetery twice a week."It is a really emotional thing, just the thought of having no flowers planted on those graves is upsetting."My mum passed away in 2013 and there has always been flowers on her grave", she partner, Darren Miles, said there had been no said many of the plots were "immaculate" and "if that is taken away there is going to be a lot of heartache for families". A spokesperson from the parish council said: "Many councils across the region, and indeed nationally, have adopted similar approaches to ensure their cemeteries remain safe, uniform, accessible, and respectfully maintained.""We would like to make clear that this change was not made for cost-saving reasons. Haddenham Parish Council remains in a fixed ground maintenance contract until 2029, so no financial benefit is associated with this policy shift."The council said it wanted to ensure the cemetery was maintained in a way that "honours those laid to rest". Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BBC News
28-07-2025
- BBC News
Veteran's grave found in Cambridgeshire 100 years after he died
The family of a Royal Navy veteran has located his grave 100 years after his Barker was born in 1880 in High Barnet, Middlesex, and volunteered to be a navy diver as well as carry out merchant ship service during World War survived a torpedo attack and, once he retired from the navy in 1924, moved to Cambridgeshire and ran the Three Horseshoes Pub in a BBC Radio Cambridgeshire appeal, a local historian investigated and said he believed Mr Barker was buried in one of three unmarked graves at the Baptist cemetery in the village. At first, historian David Edwards, from Doddington, thought it would be "fairly easy" to find someone who had died 100 years ago but then discovered many records from the time had been destroyed after a fire at the chapel in found a report of the funeral using the British newspaper archive and was made aware of a local cemetery with three unmarked graves, one of which was likely to belong to Mr Barker, but it was "almost impossible" to tell which."Finding the graves of long-lost relatives is perhaps one of the most fascinating parts of family history," Mr Edwards said. "It's always a pleasure to see the reactions of families." During the war, Mr Barker worked with the Q Ship service, which was classed as secret work and extremely dangerous, and he survived a torpedo attack that sunk his later volunteered as a navy diver, which involved making mines and torpedoes safe while wearing an old-fashioned diving Barker married his second wife in 1922 and retired from the navy two years later. He died after he was hit by a bus in St Ives while riding a bike. Mr Barker's great-grandson Kevin Brooks, from Kent, said: "It feels strange but it's good and finally something has been put to rest. "I can tell my mum, who is in her 90s, the mystery has been solved after all these years."David Webb, another relative from Kent, said: "We have been looking for a long time, 15 years, maybe more."David Edwards has done so much hard work in such a limited time... I am entirely grateful," he added. Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
