Here at Tom Adams Fruit Tree Nursery, we grow a range of organic, very rare heritage varieties, as well as modern varieties suitable for traditional orchards, commercial settings, smallholdings and the home garden.

We specialise in hard to find heritage apple varieties from the English/Welsh borderlands and are building our collection of local varieties from all over the country, helping to protect plant biodiversity, and ensure our living heritage continues to be enjoyed for generations to come.

The key to growing healthy trees is to have healthy soil. Our soil is fed by a programme of green manures composted on-site and fed right back into the soil. This means we don’t need to apply artificial chemical fertilisers to keep our trees happy.

A routine spray programme comprising organic seaweed extract, bio fertilisers and garlic oil is carried out throughout the growing season to help with pest and disease resistance as well as to promote strong healthy growth. We also encourage natural biological pest control by creating habitat for pest predators including ladybirds (whose larvae are voracious consumers of aphids) lacewings, dragonflys, and a range of bugs and beetles. Pollination is taken care of by a small apiary consisting of hives of Welsh Black honeybees, not to mention the many kinds of bumble and solitary bees which thrive here on a bounty of forage we have established for them. Biodiversity rules!

In our orchard, the trees are grown in many different forms such as bush, half standard, espalier and cordons. For anyone wanting to get an understanding of how to grow different tree forms, a visit to the nursery can help with this learning process.

All our cuttings for new trees are taken from our expanding Mother collection of Shropshire and Welsh Border varieties, some of these are varieties rediscovered by us, such as Bringewood Pippin, Gipsy King, Round Winter Nonesuch and Rhymer.

Varieties such as these, and countless more, play a vital part in our plant diversity, food security and our shared, living heritage. Each apple, pear, plum, damson, quince, cherry and medlar we have in our collection reveals intriguing stories, histories and connections between people and places, down the generations.

When you order trees from us, you are helping to steward these varieties and say ‘no!’ to a homogenised food system, supporting a holistic land management project, and (we think) getting a tastier crop, and a unique and beautiful tree to enjoy for years to come.