Today, we continue this local tradition of fruit cultivation in our orchard, where you’ll find apples, quince, medlars and the most famous of all local fruits, the Kea plum. This small damson-like plum makes a delicious jam and can still be found in local hedgerows. The apple trees in the orchard are mostly Cornish, and many were planted in the 1990s, at a time when many older apple varieties were disappearing. Almost every tree in the collection is different from the next, making the orchard an important genetic pool, as well as giving it a wealth of local character.
The collection holds around 70 different varieties, amongst them apples for cooking, juicing, eating and cider-making. Come late summer and early autumn, when the trees are ripe for picking, our conversations in the garden turn to our favourite varieties. Although we can never all quite agree (because where’s the fun in that?), we have come up with our own top 5 Cornish apples:
