Healthcare orchards scheme

We have up to 2000 fully funded fruit trees to allocate to NHS sites in England. We anticipate our healthcare orchards scheme will be in high demand so submit your expression of intrerest as soon as possible.

These fruit trees will come in multiples of 10. We recommend planting them together in a grid formation to create an orchard. We also recommend planting alongside our Wild Food bundle or with a Shelterbelt bundle adjacent to encourage and protect pollinating insects. You can order these bundles on the bundles expression of interest page.

If you put an application in now then we will be in contact over the summer for you to choose your trees. You will be able to choose from a range of species, varieties, and rootstocks to suit your site. The trees will be maidens (young single-stemmed fruit trees, typically 1-2 metres tall) and supplied with planting shelters.

Thanks to funding from the Trees Call to Action Fund we will be working with The Orchard Project to provide three training sessions on themes of design, maintenance and using your orchard. There will be time at these workshops to ask orchard experts your questions. These workshops will be held in September and October 2024. Orchards require some specialist knowledge so to give your trees the best chance of thriving all applicants will need to attend the training sessions.

Orchards used to be a common feature in hospital grounds, and we hope that we can help revive that trend. The orchards you plant will be a tool for staff and patients to engage with their environment, provide produce and offer a priority habitat for key species.