The Dispersed Urban Orchard

In years gone by almost every farm had an orchard and fruit trees and bushes were common in urban gardens too. Times changed and orchards were cleared away to make room for grass or other crops. Making jams and preserves became a thing of the past. We found, through our habitat survey that there were still some surviving orchards in Monaghan Town. Most notable of these is the orchard in St Davnet's Complex. We thought about establishing further urban orchards and then - with a view to involving the community more we decided to offer apple trees to people in the community to plant in their own gardens - and so the concept of the "dispersed" urban orchard was born. 
Trees were sourced from Irish Seed Savers and others and were "sold" to volunteers for 5 euro each. 
Volunteers took between 2 and 6 trees each and we found that we had quite a good dispersal of trees through the estates of the town. 
We plan to follow up with more trees and fruit bushes later on. Thank you to all those who have helped with this project. 
We are now mapping the dispersed orchard. 
The trees went to ; Glenview Drive, Beechgrove, Tully, Cortolvin View, Killygoan, Belgian Park, Cathedral WAlk, Glenview Heights, Church Square, Carrickeel, Woodlands, Annahagh Lane, Killygoan Allotmemts and Mullaghmatt Allotments which is a really good spread all around the main estates of the town and even a few in the town centre. Existing orchards in Rooskey (St Davnets) rear of Court House and allotments. Here is our map 

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