Book-Cycle Fruit Trees!

At least once a year, we offer heritage fruit trees to schools, not-for-profit organisations and individuals in the UK to encourage food growing and reforestation in community spaces. If you would like to be involved in our Tree-Cycle project and become a tree guardian, we’d love to hear from you!
Email: enquiries@book-cycle.org

Map your Trees

Follow the instructions below to add each of your trees to our Tree-Cycle map:

• Download Falling Fruit for android / iphone & create account.

• Select icon in bottom right corner to geo-locate your position.
– ensure phone location setting is active and you are at the planting location.

• Select icon in bottom left corner to create a new map entry, select green tick.

• Types*- search/select species & variety (eg: Apple, Russett), search/select ‘Book-Cycle Trees’.
– this must be done for the trees to appear on the map.

• Description*- please copy and paste the following – (plus any relevant details you wish to include.)

Maiden tree will not likely fruit for a couple of years from date of planting.
This is a Book-Cycle Community Tree.
To learn more, please visit www.book-cycle.org/tree-cycle
Book-Cycle is a UK charity run entirely by volunteers since 2007.

• Access*- select appropriate option.

• Status / Quality / Yield*- No selection. Update when fruiting.

That’s it! Thanks for helping make this an incredible resource for people all over the country. We hope that you will spread the word and encourage others to care for the trees and enjoy their bounty.

A Brief History of Britain’s Ancient Woodland

Having once covered almost 90% of the UK’s land area, woodlands were significantly reduced by the 11th Century to pockets of small woods covering around 15% of the country.

During the last millennium these remnants of our original ancient forest have been subject to continual land use pressure; many being completely cleared and others converted from semi-natural woodlands into productive plantations. Woodland cover reached an all time low of 5% just after WW1.

Sadly, nearly 50 per cent of the ancient woodland that survived until the 1930s has since been lost or damaged by agriculture, development or planting by non-native conifers.

The UK’s Biodiversity Action Plan reports that in the last 100 years, 46 broadleaf woodland species have become extinct in the UK.

In addition, most of ancient woodland we have left is fragmented, 8 out of 10 ancient woods are less than 20 hectares (50 acres) in size and nearly 50 per cent of ancient woods are less than 5 hectares (13 acres). In addition, 85 per cent of the ancient woodland that remains has no legal designation.

Our Part in a Greener Future

Tree Planting
Book-Cycle aims to assist with the reforestation of England and encourage natural habitat for wildlife through tree growing and planting projects.

To date we have grown hundreds of oak saplings from seeds our volunteers have collected locally and reinstated traditional hedgerows in Devon. We also work with the general public and local garden centres / nurseries to collect their unwanted saplings and offer them for a donation at our bookshop. All unwanted saplings are gratefully received at our bookshops.


A Seed Bank in a Bookshopseedbank1-min

A community seed bank is a network of seed saving and exchange that provides individuals with a resource for seed diversity and freedom in their locale.

At our bookshops we have created seed banks to encourage home food growing and self-reliance. At these ‘banks’ you can choose to take packets of seeds for a donation (part of your 3 items a day). Customers are also able to deposit any seeds they have lingering at home or have saved from plants they have grown, for use by others in their community.

We also seek to promote an ingenious yet intuitive way of gardening called Permaculture.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in” – Greek Proverb