We are in the Bowling Community Orchard which is part of Bowling Park Allotments. We took over a very derelict site 25 years ago and volunteers created this orchard.

Obviously, it’s taken a long time to develop. It’s run by volunteers with the help of BEES (Bradford Environmental Education Service) and Bradford Apple Group. We have regular volunteering sessions here on a Friday, where people can come along.

Anyone can come along and connect with nature in a way that they don’t normally. Some people don’t have gardens, don’t have green spaces. They don’t even see a tree from their windows. So we bring them here and we let them learn about cultivation, birds and insects, and how apples and pears and plums grow. People can pitch in and help out, there’s always jobs to be done.

Some of the people here are volunteers and some of them come from various businesses. It’s just wonderful to see people walking about and smiling and doing jobs that are completely different to their normal Friday afternoons.

The well being side of it, is really important. It’s well documented how people benefit from being in green spaces and being in touch with nature and trees.

People from this area of Bradford often don’t have gardens, don’t have beautiful big green spaces to come to. So it’s like a little natural haven. They can come here and just be. They can just sit and listen.

You can hear the trees behind us. You don’t really hear traffic here. So it gives people a place to just connect with other people, connect with nature, relax, improve their mental health, improve their physical health, particularly when they’re chipping in, as they are today.

I was a founder of the orchard. I first came here in 2002. It was a very rundown area, so Bradford Council were looking at ideas to try and stimulate reuse. We’d already started a consultation around creating a community orchard, and so they asked us if we’d come here and be part of their rescue scheme.

I was first inspired to create the orchard when I heard someone from Northern Fruit Group talking about community orchards, engagement with food and local growing, and how orchards are great for biodiversity. I work with BEES (Bradford Environmental Education Service). We’re a nature conservation organisation and I thought a natural step was local food growing.

So I, a total novice, looked at apple varieties that are good for the north of England, and chose ones that are complementary to each other for pollination. Technically our apples are all one species, and then there 6,000 varieties or something all told. We have 46 trees. We have a quince, six pears, and three or four plums. And then the rest are apples.