‘Bramley’s Seedling’

Plants have no regard for the human calendar, but it is the first day of a new year, 2022. It is 16 degrees Celsius, 61F or, in other terms 25% warmer than much of August. I am in Buckingham, of the shire, England. Beneath my feet, bulbs are emerging from the sward: snowdrops, winter aconites. In the neighbouring garden a song thrush is singing a song of territory and courtship.

The apple tree I am pruning, a ‘Bramley’s Seedling’ only lost its leaves in the week before Christmas. There have been a few decent frosts, but year on year the frosts migrate into the early months and the not so early. Last year, April in Oxfordshire saw 25 days out of 30 frosted, and snow in the middle of the month. It was a killing spring. Mature rosemaries died, Magnolia grandiflora turned an unhealthy shade of yellow. The grass of the deer park looked as if it would never start into life. Frosts were followed by bright sunny days coaxing the plants to life and cold northerly winds in contradiction, killing that life. There was little a gardener could do – we work with what we are given, after all. We are not gods, no matter how often we achieve the seemingly impossible when asked.

The apple in question has not been pruned properly in many years. Strong vertical branches thicker than my calves rise from the bowing crown seeking the sun. The tree was not fruitful last year and the late frosts were not to blame. The garden slopes and the cold air flows away to the Great Ouse river. I spend hours on my ladder with my bow saw, cutting with one hand and bracing the amputation with the other. Tree surgery. In the purest form.

When I have done as much as I feel is possible for one year – I don’t like to send a tree into shock – I clear my mess on the ground. I trim the laterals from the limbs with a billhook which resembles a Dacian sword. It is just as effective, travelling down the limb until it meets resistance which it removes. The limbs, the branches, I saw down to 2’/60cm lengths for outdoor burning in the summer months when the days and evenings may be colder than this winter’s day. I stack the laterals, the straight twiggy wood into a bundle, a faggot. And I have a thought which is the sort of thought which leaves me feeling dull for not having thought it before. In historic times, gardeners would light bonfires in the orchards at nightfall, to warm the air and raise it, so protecting the apple blossom from frost. Apples flower in May. The fires needed to be slow-burning but reliable. Seasoned apple wood makes great fuel. But what better to light these frost-fires than the prunings which keep the trees fruitful – the wood is thin but moist, it burns quietly, steadily. One tree has yielded sufficient prunings for fires on many nights.

I am impressed again by the joined-up agriculture of medieval Europe. Of most of the world even today come to that. They understood their world in a way which we don’t and our lack of understanding is what threatens sustainability. Our sustainability. Our viability as a planet. It is not technology, although it is, but not as the conversation has considered so far. It is that we cashed in the credit of millions of years of carbon, of plant growth, in order to try to live outside the system of the organic planet. To return to the orchards – they needed heat and fuel for future yield. The fuel which provided the heat was produced by the right management of the orchard. It returned nutrients to the soil in the form of wood ash which helped maintain the cycle. The fuel was there, provided by the trees themselves. Such elegant efficiency.