Love Leeds Parks and Fruit Works Co-operative have created a map highlighting the blossom hotspots of Leeds, with the city’s community orchards in full bloom.
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00:00I'm Chloe Sykes and I'm the CEO of Love Leeds Parks.
00:04And I'm Alan Thornton, I'm part of the Fruitworks Cooperative.
00:08Love Leeds Parks is a really tiny charity but we've got a big ambition for everyone in Leeds to have a green space that they love on their doorstep.
00:15So to that end we work with communities, particularly underserved communities, to shape and use their local green spaces on their own terms.
00:22Which is how we've come to partner with the National Trust and Fruitworks in bringing the Festival of Blossom to Leeds.
00:28Fruitworks is all about restoring and improving the fruit growing economy and culture of Leeds and Bradford.
00:35We want everybody to be able to pick and enjoy fruit.
00:40And so that's why it's great to come to an orchard now looking at its most magnificent with a blaze with these bright colours.
00:51And so it's the best time of year to really appreciate how beautiful the orchards of Leeds can look.
00:57We've been supporting volunteer-led events celebrating Blossom across orchards in Meanwood, Farsley, Seacroft, Dridlington and Headingley.
01:07And it's been really exciting because all the events are quite different even though they're all celebrating Blossom.
01:12So there's been storytelling, there's music coming up, poetry, vegetable growing, orchard tours.
01:19We are here in our apple orchard which is just one section of our one acre market garden that is part of the Meanwood Valley Urban Farm.
01:30We're just a mile and a half outside of the city centre, very close to Meanwood.
01:35And the farm itself has been here for about 40 years.
01:38The blossoms just started to appear in the kind of final weeks of April.
01:43And on the 1st of May we're having a celebration, a May Day celebration to invite people to come and enjoy the blossoms and also take part in lots of May Day traditions.
01:54The last time we were spending a lot of time in the orchard was in the winter where we did a winter prune of all the trees.
01:59Our friends at Fruitworks came to help upskill us and our volunteers.
02:03At this time of year the trees and everything else on the farm really is just bursting into life.
02:08I think the farm in general and also the market garden provide a really great opportunity for everybody in Leeds to connect with nature, to connect with food, to connect with animals and to connect with each other.
02:20If anyone's wanting to get involved with the Festival of Blossom here in Leeds you can go to the Love Leeds Park website and the Leeds and Blossom section.
02:27It's got all the information about the upcoming events but it's also got a map that we've produced with the National Trust and with Fruitworks that's got 15 Blossom hotspots on it.
02:36Years gone by lots of us all over Leeds would grow fruit at home and then around the peripheries there would be a whole load of orchards and lots of that tradition and that learning has been lost.
02:48And so that's being fostered again with community orchards all over the city and there's a hundred in Leeds, more than any other city outside of London.