Rural Smallholdings Magazine

Interest in local and heritage varieties of fruit trees has grown significantly in recent years, according to Hamid Habibi of the Keepers fruit tree nursery in Kent. Sarah Irving talks to him about growing apple trees and why growing fruit is a good path for the smallholder to go down.

“The growth of interest in local produce has motivated people with a bit of land to try and grow fruit,” says Hamid Habibi. “Fruit is a crop which you can produce as a semi-amateur, if you like – it’s not like trying to grow wheat or other major crops. It can be done on a small scale.”

Habibi has run Keepers Nursery for nearly 20 years, since founder Mike Cook retired.

“It started as a hobby for Mike,” Habibi explains. “He worked for Morley Research Station and was a fruit tree enthusiast. After a while, people started asking him for unusual varieties of apple trees – old varieties or new ones which weren’t commercially available – and he built up a reputation. My wife and I got involved in 1991 because we had some land that the nursery could use.”

Over almost twenty years, Habibi has witnessed the growth of interest in heritage apple varieties and in locally sourced food more generally. He attributes public interest in growing food to rising food prices and then to the current recession.

“Apparently people are spending a lot more time in their own gardens instead of going out and spending money,” he says. “Obviously it makes sense for economic reasons, but its also more interesting to grow things that you then eat.”

This widespread engagement with growing food has meant that Keepers Nursery and other selling a broader range of edible plants have bucked the recessionary trend. “We’ve seen a surge in demand in the last three or four years,” says Hamid Habibi. “And the reports I’m hearing from fellow nurseries is that many of them have had a bumper year too. It’s only December now, which is fairly early, but we’ve already almost sold out of many of our trees this year.”

For aspiring fruit growers – whether smallholders or individuals looking for just one or two orchard trees for their garden – Habibi has some words of advice.

“If you go to your local general nursery or garden centre, the choice you get is extremely limited still and it is mainly pot-grown trees, which are quite honestly not as good as bare root apple trees,” he says. And despite Keepers Nursery’s huge collection of over 600 varieties of apple trees, as well as pears and plums, he urges new growers not to “get too hung up” on the idea of growing local or heritage varieties.

“It’s most important that you pick trees which are going to give a good crop, that are disease resistant and which have nice apples that you and your children are going to like,” he says. “That’s not necessarily going to be local varieties – some are very good, but some are quite indifferent. Quite a lot of commercial varieties are also not that good for small-scale growing, because they don’t have resistance to disease and need spraying. So for an allotment or smallholding, by all means go for a local variety – but only if it fits those other requirements.”

Despite this pragmatic advice, Habibi remains concerned about the fate of some of Britain’s heritage fruit varieties. “We are lucky in this country in that there is still a big national collection at Brogdale, although it’s constantly under threat of extinction from lack of funding,” he says. Keepers Nursery, says Habibi, continues “to try to fill that gap,” supplying unusual types to local authorities, National Trust properties and conservation organisations with a commitment to preserving the huge diversity of Britain’s traditional fruit trees.

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Article by Sarah Irving for Rural Smallholdings Magazine