Cornwall Sustainability Award Winner

• Our sustained efforts over the last 10 years in creating and maintaining a Nature Reserve, Community Orchard & an edible Forest Garden, 30 acres in all.
• Promoting biodiversity, sustainability, and community wellbeing through volunteering, education, and events, offering a welcoming place for people to connect with nature, learn, and share harvests.

Penbeagle Nature Reserve: 

• Planting over 2000 Cornish native woodland trees in the Nature Reserve, which has recently received Local Nature Reserve status.
• Encouraging meadows & heathland through selective clearing and grassland cutting at certain times of the year.
• Retaining thick blackthorn scrub to provide valuable nesting and refuge habitat for birds and small mammals.
• The use of predominantly scythes rather than strimmers to reduce disturbance to ground-dwelling species.
• Following a detailed tree care plan to ensure all trees are cared for throughout the years  //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/tree-care-plan/
• Maintaining many pathways to ensure continued access for habitat management and monitoring.

Community Orchard, Food Forest & Veg gardens

• Planting over 100 varieties of fruit and nut trees (over 300) alongside a huge variety of fruit bushes, vegetables, herbs & useful plants in the Community Orchard.
• Leaving dead wood deliberately in situ and creating a log pile to support fungi and invertebrates, installing a large log beehive  to support wild pollinators and keeping a south facing bare ground clear to attract mining bees.
• Improving soil using 6 compost bins adding food waste from various sources, worm baths, collection of horse manure and seaweed, green manure planting, mulching around trees using wood chippings, cut grass and bracken, companion planting around trees and no dig permaculture planting methods.
• Regularly spreading large varieties of wildflowers and wildgrass seeds in suitable areas.
• Managing the orchard as an edible forest garden using agroforestry principles combining productive fruit and nut trees with wildflower meadows, edible woodland planting and community food-growing areas which all provide a continuous supply of nectar, fruit and shelter for pollinators, insects, birds and small mammals.
• Making juice, cider, preserves and meals from the harvest, selling at events to help fund free community gatherings. Giving excess produce to a local foodshare group who distributes free food daily to those who need it.

Volunteers, Community Involvement & Management. 

• Following management plans created for both the Nature Reserve & the Community Orchard.
  St Ives Community Orchard Management Plan
  Penbeagle Nature Reserve Management Plan
• The entire project has been almost entirely volunteer-led, managed and run with work parties twice a week over the last 10 years. We had our first paid roles last year thanks to our inclusion in the Town Deal.
• Involving over 200 volunteers in all these activities, plus hundreds more people in the community through events, workshops, repair cafe’s, walks and talks, harvesting & apple pressing.
• On average we have 40 actively sustained volunteers working with us weekly.
• There are 7 directors and 30 committee members, all volunteers who meet regularly to discuss site management, projects, events and future aspirations.
• In  2024 – 25 (see Impact report), we welcomed 47 new volunteers, bringing our total to 146 with volunteers contributing over 3,000 hours.
• 100’s more have volunteered in tree planting activities plus Duke of Edinburgh volunteers, students from St Ives Secondary school as part of their Be inspired project, St Ives Infant School students as part of their “Learning Where Food Comes From” activities and students from Cornwall2Learning.
• Collaborations at the events included Leach Pottery, Tate St Ives, St Ives Library, and St Ives Foodshare.
• After discussion with St Ives Town Council, many trees have been planted in the area above the fire station, around the skate park and football pitch.
• Hosting groups of hard-working ‘corporate’ volunteers from Cornwall Council.
• Providing advice, plans and trees to support St Ives Junior school with the planting of over 100 trees at the school. This led to a collaboration with their vegetable garden where our volunteers were able to grow vegetable seedlings  in the Junior School polytunnel, supporting both our garden and the school’s. A gardening club for the school children was started at the school due to the improvements made to their veg garden.
• Leasing two new vegetable growing sites in St Ives from LiveWest Housing association where community gardens are actively being grown.