Join us on Saturday 18 October to celebrate the change in seasons and the abundance of Autumn.

Every year hundreds of apples grown throughout Angus are wasted. This is a chance to bring along your surplus apple yields and contribute to this year’s apple juice. If you bring some apples from your trees, you will get a lovely bottle of juice to take home.

‘Apple Day’, first launched in 1990 by Common Ground with an aspiration to create a calendar custom, an autumn holiday. From the start, Apple Day was intended to be both a celebration and a demonstration of the variety we are in danger of losing, not simply in apples, but in the richness and diversity of landscape, ecology and culture too.

In 2021, as a nod to its monastic history, Hospitalfield added nineteen new varieties of apple tree and in 2022 at our first Apple Day we added six new trees. We had already planted small orchards on the site including those that are part of our collaboration with the Arbroath Pippins Community Orchard, and we continue our commitment to nurturing these trees for future crops and support heritage varieties.

At the beginning of The Antiquary by Walter Scott, the scene is set, the site is Monkbarns, the house and gardens at the centre of Scott’s novel. We knew that Hospitalfield was the inspiration for Scott’s Monkbarns and at the beginning of the book, he explains coming across apple trees.

Scott describes the trees as planted by the monks with a slab of stone beneath them to encourage the roots to travel horizontally into the richer top soil, so producing the best crop. This method of planting causes the trees to tilt and lean due to the lack of root stability. A picture of ancient old laden trees is conjured. This literary connection of the site to Scott’s early 19th century novel has inspired our focus on planting new orchards on the site and our celebration of the humble apple.

Join us on the day and bring your surplus apples and contribute to this year’s apple juice, bring bottles and take your delicious apple juice home with you.

Find out more.