Business is blooming

Now 39, he began his working life with the Surrey-based landscape gardening company Gavin Jones, where he climbed the ranks to head up a team working for clients at Milton Park and elsewhere in Oxfordshire.

But he decided to start his own business after being asked by clients to look after their grounds on a permanent basis.

Mr Davis explained: “In ten weeks I set up my new business, Green Surroundings from my home in Witney, buying equipment and a van and dealing with finance.”

That was in 2003 and over the following years Mr Davis built the business, taking on six staff. Then came the recession.

He said: “I had some staff leave — one decided to go to Australia and another found himself a job nearer home. I decided to lay off the remaining staff and to work on my own, focusing on a new specialist area.”

This was the care of fruit trees. The change took place in 2011 and Oxford Fruit Care, also based at Mr Davis’ Witney home, came into being.

He was already very knowledgeable about all matters relating to fruit trees and orchard management, through his earlier experience.

When starting out on his career he had followed a Royal Horticultural Society course which covered all the basic skills, including all aspects for vegetables and fruit and he has taken courses to gain his certificates for crop-spraying and chainsaw use.

“I have also taught myself over the years through books and videos, as well as through my own practical experience,” he said.

“When there is something which you really like doing, you put a lot of effort into it.”

His expertise in his new field has been recognised by his being able to establish a number of contracts with clients to carry out year-round maintenance of their trees.

He aims to call in on each about once a fortnight and deal with whatever is needed at that time.

The annual programme includes autumn and winter pruning, spring planting of new trees, the thinning out of fruit in the summer after the ‘July drop’ in order to improve its quality, spraying for pests — but only if this is essential — mowing grass and training espaliers.

Different types of fruit have different schedules — plums and cherries for instance are pruned at around September time.

So for the orchard owner Mr Davis’ knowledge and experience can be important in providing the best yields from the healthiest trees.

There has been an increasing interest over the past few years in the older traditional varieties of fruit, particularly apples and pears and in the conservation of long-established orchards.

Working on these is particularly interesting for Mr Davis, including on that of a client who inherited a property with more than two dozen trees that had been planted in the 1930s or 1940s. The orchard here had over time become overgrown.

“It has taken two winter prunings to start getting it back to how it should be and it will take three to five years to complete the process,”

Mr Davis explained.

“It is quite a challenge and not an instant process but we can see already how it is coming back to how it once looked.

“Many of the trees had grown thin and straggly and they need to build up a new canopy of branches.”

There is another interesting challenge in this orchard — attempting to identify these older varieties of fruit.

“I have been starting on the identification during the last year,” said Mr Davis.

“It is very difficult — the further back you go in age the greater the number of varieties that are possible.

“Nowadays people are more likely to plant just the specific varieties which they know they like — such as Cox’s Orange Pippin or Golden Delicious.

“Sometimes you see a characteristic that makes you think you have made an identification — but it turns out to be only one of the parents of that variety. Apples are difficult and pears can be even more so.”

Also a great fascination is tracing local varieties — in Oxfordshire they include the famous Blenheim Orange, the Lord Lambourne and its companion the Lady Lambourne.

Another interesting orchard which Mr Davis looks after is in the private garden of Lord Faringdon at the National Trust property, Buscot House near Faringdon.

Here too there is a range of varieties, planted over a period and some of the less-frequently grown fruits such as medlars and quinces.

“I also still do some gardening work, I am pretty well booked up all year round,” he said.

And as if working outside is not enough, in his spare time he enjoys walking and studying the wildflowers and fungi which are particularly useful.

“What I find during my forays could be encountered again where I am working,”

he said.

Contact: 01993 201078 n Web: www.oxfordfruitcare.co.uk