IN THEIR OWN WORDS
DRAGON ORCHARD 22 acres - 15 acres cider fruit; also dessert apples, damsons, Mirabelles, greengages, quince. CIDER APPLE VARIETIES inc: Dabinett, Somerset Redstreak, Browns, Ellis Bitter, Kingston Black ONCE UPON A TREE numerous awards, including 2012 – BBC Food & Farming, Drinks Producer of the Year OTHER AWARD HIGHLIGHTS 1997 – Daily Telegraph Eco-House of the Year Self Build House of the Year 2007 – Country Living Business Women of the Year, Rural Diversification dragonorchard.co.uk
ANN & NORMAN STANIER DRAGON ORCHARD Forget the 3 Rs, for Ann and Norman Stanier, owners of the peerless Dragon Orchard, it’s the two Cs, connections and community. Susanna Forbes catches up with them after a chilly day’s pruning With a shared love of the great outdoors, orcharding in the blood, and an infectious interest in humanity, it’s perhaps not that surprising that Ann and Norman’s Dragon Orchard is so much more than a collection of trees. Yet often when we meet there’ll be updates on travels too, and ciders caught along the way. As it was when we met one windy evening before the COVID-19 crisis began to take a grip… Norman Stanier: In 2016 we took a whole year off. We went to Willie Smith’s in Tasmania. It has a museum and it was just like going into an old Herefordshire orchard. They had done it so well.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Where did your innate connection with orchards begin? NS: It’s sort of what I am really. My greatgrandfather, Harry Taylor, came to Putley in the 1870s to manage the Putley Court Estate. One thousand acres, it was bought by a Yorkshire man called John Riley. He’d been to Trinity College Cambridge, and his family made their money in cloth. He was one of the very early members of the Royal Horticultural Society.
When Riley bought the estate he went to America and saw all the new orchards in the Hudson Valley and Vermont. They were amazing because they weren’t hampered by tradition. The English orchards at the time were a complete mess. There was a massive balance of payment problem for prime minister William Gladstone. The Yankee apples were all coming in, while the English dessert apples – no-one knew what they were. It took Gladstone and Dr Robert Hogg from the RHS to shake up the whole of the English apple industry. And Herefordshire through the Woolhope Club, was commissioned by Gladstone to lead the way. Riley was a member of the Woolhope Club, and the secretary of the Woolhope Club at the time was the Rev Bulmer.
“IT’S PROVIDING SHAPE TO THE TREE. BUT IT’S ALSO GIVING SHAPE TO OUR LIVES, AND CONNECTING US TO THE LANDSCAPE” Riley realised that his 1,000 acre farm could be a model orchard but he didn’t know how to do it. So he advertised for an overseer and my great grandfather got the job. He learned his business from his father, Samuel Taylor, who had this big nursery in Droitwich. The family story is that he was interviewed at Malvern Station and Riley said “I think you’re great but you’re too young for the job.” And he said, “Well if you’ve got a young prime minister – Gladstone was only 26 – I think I can run your orchards.” And so he did, until the end of the century. Back then it was called Orchard Croft. It had apples, plums and pears. No cider fruit. It was all dessert fruit. I worked on the farm with my brother. I vividly
remember just after I’d learnt to drive – I was 17 – I got up at 4o’clock in the morning, did three hours picking, had breakfast. Then I took the strawberries to Hereford Market and then I went and did my A levels. In the 1970s, it was getting harder to sell dessert fruit at a decent price, so my father put in nine acres of the first Bulmers bush fruit.
How did you and Ann meet? We met through the Outward Bound organisation. I was working in Holne Park in Devon, and so was her father. We spent a lot of time in Minnesota. Got into Canadian canoeing. We have two canoes which we use whenever we can. It’s the rhythm of it, the journey and the remote places you can get to. It’s the connection to the elements. When I’ve got an axe in my hand and when I’m splitting firewood, it’s exactly the same feeling as when I’ve got a pruning saw in my hands. It’s being outside. It’s being in the elements. It’s being totally connected with the surroundings. With the weather and the wind. When we’re pruning, you’re very aware of where the sun is because you can’t see if it’s not at your back. You’re very aware of where the wind is because otherwise you’re getting sawdust in your eyes. And it’s providing shape to the tree. But it’s also providing shape to our lives, and connecting us to the landscape. We’d always wanted to come back here, but we didn’t know how we could do it. When we did get back, we worked alongside my mother, Dorothy. She said she didn’t know much but she was still pruning when she was 80.
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