Welsh Apples Are Great!

Have you heard of the Bardsey Apple, Trwyn Mochyn, Pigeon’s Beak, Rhyl Beauty, Cox Cymraeg, or the Nant Gwrtheyrn Apple?

These are just some of the apple varieties that are unique to Wales, and that have now been planted in Wales’s first Welsh Apple Orchard.

GreenWood Forest Park
, which has a great interest in all things to do with trees, has planted a unique orchard of 15 apple varieties that originated in Wales. Some have fascinating stories, like Afal Deimant, crates of which were washed ashore after a shipwreck in Cardigan Bay in the 19th Century. Others, such as the Bardsey Apple, are only represented by one tree growing on the side of one of the houses on Bardsey Island, off the tip of the Llŷn Peninsula.

These varieties have been collected and propagated by the master of apple grafting, Ian Sturrock, whose nursery just outside Bangor is full of fascinating fruit trees of all sorts.

The trees at GreenWood are maidens – i.e. they have made just one year’s growth since grafting, so it will be several years before they fruit – but in years to come they will hopefully provide a wonderful crop of genuine Welsh apples. GreenWood’s Marketing and HR Director Andrea Bristow said: “I am looking forward to seeing the orchard in bloom next spring and many springs thereafter – and of course to tasting the many different apples!”

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