Grow Fruit Trees

24/10/2026

🍎🌳 TASTE IT AT BROGDALE. GROW IT IN YOUR GARDEN!

Ever wondered what some of our wonderful heritage apples actually taste like?

Our friends at are holding their Pick Your Own days and orchard walks, offering a fantastic opportunity to explore the National Fruit Collection and discover some truly delicious and unusual apple varieties! 🍏

With different varieties ripening throughout the season, there's always something interesting to discover.

Found an apple you absolutely love? Why not grow your own? 🌳

Just down the road at Grow Fruit Trees, we've spent over 20 years propagating fruit trees from the National Fruit Collection.

We have an incredible selection of heritage apple trees ready to purchase, and we can even graft your favourite variety especially for you!

🏡 Come and visit us at our nursery in Mersham, Kent.

💻 No time to visit? No problem! Browse our website, send us a message or give us a call. We're always happy to help you find the perfect tree.

🚚 Delivery available – you don't need to live locally!

🍎 Discover it. Taste it. Grow it!

🌐 www.growfruittrees.co.uk
📞 01795 531888

01/10/2026

🌱🍎 We’re going to the Kent Biodiversity & Regenerative Food Festival! 🌳🍐
We’re really excited to be joining Regenerative Foods at the Kent Biodiversity & Regenerative Food Festival at Vine Gardens, Sevenoaks on Saturday 3rd October.
If you would love to grow your own fruit but don’t quite know where to start, come and have a chat with us.
Perhaps you’re thinking about planting your very first apple tree, would love an espalier or fan against a wall, or want to create a small productive space in your garden.
Or perhaps your plans are on a much grander scale and you’re considering a new orchard, a community planting project or bringing an old orchard back to life.
We’ve got you. 🌳
At Grow Fruit Trees, we’ve been growing fruit trees for over 20 years, specialising in rare and heritage varieties and helping to keep some of our wonderful old fruit varieties growing for future generations.
We grow organically, using peat free compost and working with nature wherever we can. Alongside supplying fruit trees, we offer bespoke grafting, orchard planning and restoration, pruning, maintenance, planting and, of course, plenty of friendly advice.
We’ll be bringing a selection of trees with us too, so you can see just how much is possible, even if you don’t have a huge garden.
The festival itself is all about biodiversity, regenerative and organic growing, local food and creating a wilder, more sustainable future — so it feels like a rather perfect place for us to be! 🌱
If you’re coming along, please pop over and say hello. Bring your fruit tree questions, your orchard ideas, or simply your dream for a more productive and sustainable garden. We’d love to meet you.
📍 Vine Gardens, Sevenoaks, TN13 3UH
📅 Saturday 3rd October
⏰ 10.30am – 4pm
🎟️ Free entry
And a little wave to Produced in Kent and Ashford Chamber of Commerce — we’re looking forward to taking a little bit of Ashford grown fruit tree expertise over to West Kent! 💚
🌿 Grow Fruit Trees
Heritage fruit trees grown organically
www.growfruittrees.co.uk

23/09/2026

🍎 APPLE PIE OR APPLE CRUMBLE? 🥧
A very important question from the nursery today...
If you had to choose, which would it be?

🥧 APPLE PIE
or
🍎 APPLE CRUMBLE

Pop PIE or CRUMBLE in the comments below. No sitting on the fence – you have to choose!

Of course, being us, a conversation about apple crumble very quickly turns into a conversation about which apple should go into it.

Mention a cooking apple and most people immediately think of Bramley. It is a wonderful cooker, but what I think is sometimes forgotten is that there are so many other cooking apples to choose from.

And depending on your garden and the space you have available, some may actually suit you better.

Bramley is a triploid variety, which makes pollination a little more complicated as it needs two suitable pollinating partners. It is also a tip bearer, so it isn't a variety we would choose for tightly trained forms such as espaliers and stepovers.

So, what else could you grow?

🍏 Golden Noble – a wonderful old Norfolk cooking apple. Very juicy, with a lovely sharpness, and it cooks down beautifully. A great choice for sauces, purées and that lovely soft apple filling.

🍏 Reverend W. Wilks – large apples with tangy, juicy flesh which cook down to a lovely froth. It is also self-fertile, which can make it a really useful choice where space is limited.

🍏 London Pippin – a historic English apple with firm, juicy flesh and a distinctive flavour. It holds its shape when cooked, so perhaps one for our APPLE PIE voters!

🍏 Annie Elizabeth – a lovely late-keeping cooking apple and one that can store well into the spring, extending the season for home-grown cooking apples.
And that really is only scratching the surface.

One of the things we love about growing fruit trees is introducing people to varieties they may never see on a supermarket shelf – including some wonderful cooking apples that have been grown in Britain for generations.

We currently have a number of cooking varieties available at the nursery, including some trained as stepovers, so you certainly don't need a huge garden to grow your own cooking apples and yes we do have the odd Bramley too!

But back to the important question...

🥧 PIE
or
🍎 CRUMBLE?

Pop your vote in the comments and we'll count them up.

And if you have a favourite cooking apple, we'd love to hear that too!

www.growfruittrees.co.uk

14/09/2026

Well, this rather made our day!

We received this lovely email after Ian and Jan visited the nursery on Saturday:

"Having done a lot of confusing research online we decided to come to your Nursery for help – which was the best decision ever made."

They left with three new fruit trees and, hopefully, feeling rather less confused!

This really is what we are here for. Choosing a fruit tree can sometimes feel far more complicated than it needs to be, so if you aren't sure what you need, please do come and talk to us.

You absolutely don't need to know your rootstocks from your pollination groups before you arrive – that's our job!

Thank you Ian and Jan for taking the time to write. It really did make our day

Grow Fruit Trees – Mersham, Kent
Open Wednesday–Saturday
www.growfruittrees.co.uk

10/09/2026

So, what exactly is Grow Fruit Trees?

One thing we have realised recently is that quite a few people assume we are a garden centre.

We're not!

We don't have a coffee shop – although we can highly recommend the rather excellent Hamilton Airfield Tearoom, which is only about five minutes away.

We don't sell gifts, garden furniture, books, barbecues or pet supplies.

In fact, we're probably a rather disappointing place to visit if you've come looking for a scented candle or a new pair of gardening gloves!

What we do have is fruit trees. Lots and lots of fruit trees.
Grow is a working, specialist fruit tree nursery.

Our days are spent growing, grafting, training and caring for fruit trees – and helping other people to do the same.

We grow apples, pears, plums, cherries, gages, damsons and more, including many rare, heritage and historic varieties that you simply won't find in an ordinary garden centre.

You'll find young trees growing on in pots alongside bush trees, half and full standards, espaliers, fans and stepovers. And if we don't have the particular variety you're looking for, there's a very good chance we can graft it for you.

But the trees themselves are only part of what we do.

We can help you work out which tree is right for you – the variety, rootstock, size and form – taking into account where you want to plant it, your soil, the space you have available and what you actually want from your tree.

If you're thinking of planting an orchard, we can help plan it.

If you'd like us to plant your trees, we can do that too.

We prune, restore and maintain existing fruit trees and orchards, and we can teach you how to prune and care for them yourself.
We can even take graftwood from a much-loved old fruit tree and propagate a new tree from it.

And sometimes people simply arrive at the nursery saying “I'd really like an apple tree, but I haven't got a clue which one!”
That's absolutely fine too. That's what we're here for.

We're a slightly muddy, very busy, working fruit tree nursery, run by people who live, breathe and spend most of our time thinking and talking about fruit trees.

And we rather like it that way.

If it's about fruit trees, there's a very good chance we can help.

Grow Fruit Trees
South Stour Nurseries, Mersham, Kent

Open Wednesday–Saturday
www.growfruittrees.co.uk

05/09/2026

✈️ Exciting News at Hamilton Farm Airfield! ✈️

We’re delighted to announce that British Young Pilots is coming to Hamilton Farm Airfield!

If you know a young person in Year 6 to Year 13 with an interest in aviation, this is an incredible opportunity to learn, make new friends, and experience the exciting world of flying.

🛩️ What to expect:
• Hands-on aviation activities
• Learn from industry experts
• Build confidence and teamwork
• Make friends who share a passion for aviation
• Fun, engaging sessions with real-world aviation skills

📅 Choose from:
🔹 Weekend Club – Fortnightly on Sundays
🔹 Evening Club – Weekly on Wednesdays

Places are limited, so don’t miss out!

Find out more and book your place here:
🌐 www.britishyoungpilots.com

We’re excited to welcome British Young Pilots to Hamilton Farm Airfield and can’t wait to see the next generation of aviators take to the skies! ✈️💙🧡

03/09/2026

So why did we set up Grow Fruit Trees?

Following on from our little re-introduction, I thought we would tell you a bit more about why Grow Fruit Trees came about – and really, to do that, we have to tell you a little about the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale Brogdale Collections - Charity

The history behind the Collection is fascinating and goes back much further than many people realise.

Fruit growing has been important here in Kent for centuries. Back in the time of Henry VIII, his fruiterer Richard Harris was tasked with establishing orchards at Teynham, bringing in and growing different varieties of cherries, apples and pears.

The National Fruit Collection as we know it today came much later, formally beginning in 1922 and eventually finding its home at Brogdale Farm near Faversham.

Today it is home to around 3,500 named fruit varieties and is one of the most important collections of its kind in the world.
But this isn't a collection tucked away in a museum. It is a living collection.

Thousands of different fruit varieties are quite literally being kept alive – preserving not only their wonderful flavours and histories, but an enormous amount of genetic diversity too.

Different varieties bring different characteristics – disease resistance, flowering and cropping times, growing habits and the ability to cope with different conditions. With our climate changing and growers facing new challenges, preserving that diversity has perhaps never been more important.

And this is really where Grow Fruit Trees (formerly known as GROW at Brogdale) comes into the story.
20 Years ago we felt very strongly that it wasn't enough for these wonderful varieties simply to exist within a National Collection.
They needed to be grown. They needed to find their way back into gardens, orchards, schools and community spaces, where people could grow them, eat them and keep them going for another generation.

And so Grow was born.

For many years our nursery was based at Brogdale Farm and today we have our own nursery at Mersham, but that original purpose is still very much at the heart of what we do.

We continue to propagate rare, heritage and historic varieties. Sometimes someone wants a variety that originated in their own village or county, sometimes it's an apple remembered from childhood, and sometimes we are asked to preserve a much-loved old family tree by taking graftwood from it and growing a fresh, new tree.

And sometimes somebody simply wants an apple that tastes completely different from anything they can buy in the supermarket!

For us, conservation isn't just about preserving the name of an old variety.

It's about keeping these wonderful varieties growing.

And over 20 years later, that's still a very big part of why we do what we do.

If you have an old fruit tree with a story behind it, we'd love to hear about it.

31/08/2026

We thought it was about time we re-introduced ourselves...

Although we have been growing fruit trees for over 20 years, and spent many of those years based at Brogdale Farm, home of the National Fruit Collection, we are still amazed by how many people say to us "I didn't know you were here!"

We have also been rather quiet on Facebook for far too long, so we thought it was probably time we did something about it!

We are Grow Fruit Trees, a small family-run specialist fruit tree nursery now based at South Stour Nurseries in Mersham, Kent.
The nursery was originally set up to help protect and preserve some of the wonderful rare, heritage and historic fruit varieties held within the National Fruit Collection. More than 20 years later, this is still very much at the heart of what we do.

We are a rather passionate bunch and care deeply about the trees we grow and the work that we do. We don't just want to sell you a fruit tree and send you on your way. We want to make sure you have the right tree for your garden, soil and location and, importantly, that you know how to look after it.

Whether you are looking for one special tree for your garden, thinking about planting an orchard and don't know where to start, have inherited some old fruit trees that need a bit of love and attention, or have a much-loved old tree that you would like us to preserve by grafting it, we are here to help.

We can help you choose, plan, plant, prune and care for your trees, restore old orchards and, wherever possible, teach you the skills to confidently look after your own trees too.

Our working nursery in Mersham is open to the public Wednesday to Saturday. The rest of the time you will often find us out visiting clients, planting orchards, pruning trees or working on one of our many projects. And although we are based in Kent, our trees travel all over the country.

We are going to try very hard not to be so quiet on here from now on! Over the coming weeks we will show you a little more of what goes on behind the scenes at the nursery, introduce you to some of the team and, of course, share some of the rather special varieties we grow.

So, if you have only just discovered us, hello and welcome!

And if you have known us for years, please do say hello. We would especially love to hear what trees you have bought from us over the years and how they are getting on.

www.growfruittrees.co.uk

18/12/2025