Robbie Coleman & Jo Hodges
Initiators of The Far Orchard 2022-23
“Connecting living systems, food and community”
The Far Orchard is an imaginative participatory arts project that develops over many years, building a community based around living systems in a deep and evolving way.
“As artists we’re interested in exploring ecological and social systems and processes and in making work at the places where they connect and intersect. At a time when many of the key ecological systems that support us are under pressure from unsustainable human activity, we felt it was important to make a work that involved and reconnected people to living systems, growing food and that developed new community connections, bringing people together to share knowledge, harvests, creativity and fun.
The Far Orchard is a rethinking of the traditional apple orchard where all trees grow together on single area of land. The Far Orchard aims to create an apple orchard that is distributed across Banchory with individual trees being ‘hosted’ (offered a home) in private gardens, schools, care homes and other places such as allotments. Each tree will be cared for by an individual or family and this community of hosts will form the backbone of the project. We are hoping that as the trees grow; knowledge, growing tips, harvests, celebrations and friendships will develop and will be shared between The Far Orchard community, the Barn and beyond to the wider community of Banchory. Networks extending into networks.
The Far Orchard subtly highlights and echoes the informal networks of care and kindness that grew up around us and thrived during the Covid years. It is a live project that continues to explore how important and life affirming these connections have been, creating a space to think more deeply about how they may be developed and extended, nurtured and made sustainable into the future.
It is a project that is the antithesis of the ‘attention’ economy with its offer of instant gratification and which requires patience and care. It asks us to imagine into the future and hold an idea in common that matures over years; a project that requires patience before ‘bearing fruit’.
All the partners in the project will develop a deeper understanding of and connection to other living systems that they live within. The flowering of the apple trees and the behaviour of pollinating insects are key to successful harvests as apple trees rely on insects for pollination and do not produce fruit well on their own.
People and organisations will apply to ‘host’ a tree and existing trees will also be able to join the network. The insect pollinators, and their journeys between the trees will be part of the conversation of the orchard from the very beginning – bringing these vital processes into a new and sharper focus and offering a vision of a town that is more connected to and aware of the importance of its more than human inhabitants. Offering to host a tree from The Far Orchard will bring people into a closer observation, engagement and understanding of the dynamic relationships, conditions and cycles between species and seasons, growth and harvest that need to exist for continuing thriving and sustainability. Nothing thrives in isolation – it is these networks of care and connection to living systems that create the right conditions.
Over the first year, we will work in collaboration with the Barn, initiating, designing and supporting the Far Orchard but after the first year we will take a back seat and will invite different artists to work with the network. We are keen for the Far Orchard to develop over time not just by adding new trees and hosts but by using creativity as a way to explore and deepen our understanding of the natural world around us. By introducing new artists to The Far Orchard, we aim for tree hosts to engage with the project in new ways.”
We hope that The Far Orchard will become a tangible community asset and well as a metaphor for the importance of networks of connection; an orchard of single trees, cared for and connected by a human and more than human community
Robbie Coleman and Jo Hodges. 2022
The Far Orchard 