PLANTS WITH

PURPOSE

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a wee green family business, based in Perthshire, Scotland

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unusual herbs + edible plants + green consultancy + advice + sustainable gardening workshops + foraging walks + talks

scottish fruit trees + traditional varieties + fruit identification + advice + workshops + demonstrations + orchard management + surveying

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Andrew Lear Appletreeman

All images and words © Plants with Purpose & Appletreeman.

I was born in East Devon, and was practically born in a cider orchard. I even had a treehouse in a big old Bramley tree in the garden!

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From a first career as a primary teacher, I inherited gardening from my mother and a passion for the country and the natural world from a childhood regarding the lack of it in a suburb called Chadwell Heath.

Eventually, realising plants can be better relied
upon to respond to you than children, I graduated in science and retrained in horticulture, since when I have worked in landscaping, nursery production, semi-self-sufficient smallholding, and, of course, education – which always creeps up and grabs me from behind. I’m resigned to it now! Most of my students are sweeties.

The Appletreeman (opposite) has been hanging around since we were at agricultural college together, and fathered the two babies (now grown up and designing this website. I hope.) We co-operate reasonably well, even when he fills the house with festering fruit that I’m not allowed to eat till he’s identified it.

In my spare time (HAHAHA!), I read as many books as I can get my hands on, take an increasingly insane border collie for long walks, cosset my hens and ducks and geese, and think about heroes, sub-atomic particles, Casablanca , black holes, tea and slime moulds. I do all that while listening to Radio 4, as a rule, but occasionally to a worryingly diverse selection of music.

  Round up the usual suspects.

Margaret Lear

Plants with Purpose

Despite emanating from the turgid Essex-East London shadowlands, I steadily progressed countrywards and northwards, landing finally and with commitment in Scotland in 1990 as a horticulturist, wild food fiend and mother of two babies.

Surrounding us were many orchards. Some supplied the Cider factory at Whimple, called Whiteways, where my grandfather worked for a while. And behind our house in Ottery St Mary was an old orchard full of horrible tasting cookers (I didn’t know the difference then) and some vicious geese! The orchard belonged to an old farming family of Luxtons, and sadly went the way of many orchards – developed into houses in the 1980's.

I trained in tree surgery and horticulture, and went on to work in various parts of England and Scotland. Later I came across the orchards in Worcestershire and spent a spell on the West Coast on Gigha in the walled garden, which also had good fruit!

I have always grown fruit trees, and my first introduction to our heritage trees was when I instigated the planting of old Scottish varieties at Culzean Castle in 1990.

I am now putting 30 years of horticultural knowledge into practice by teaching and advising orchard groups and owners throughout Scotland, and propagating our Scottish varieties of fruit.

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