ORCHARD PROJECT - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Head of Operations and Programmes for Southern England
Abby is our Head of Operations and Programmes for Southern England and Wales and has been with The Orchard Project since 2016. She was previously Director of our successful Celebration of Orchards project which was nominated as one of the best Heritage Lottery projects across the UK in 2019. She ran an education charity for several years prior to joining The Orchard Project, and has a background in managing major projects for young people and schools. Abby lived in London for many years before moving to Bristol in 2021. She spends much of her spare time with her family at her allotment or out walking (up hills etc!), most recently spending two weeks walking the south west coast path.
Alan is a trained forester and compulsive gardener, so it was natural that he would be drawn to forest gardening. He has experimented with adapting the technique to cool climates (north east Scotland) and small spaces (his allotment) for over 30 years. He shares his findings through his website (foodforest.garden), courses and more recently his book, A Food Forest In Your Garden. When not in his allotment he works for the charity Reforesting Scotland.
Job Titles:
- Chartered Accountant
- Trustee
Andrew is a chartered accountant with a background in property. Having begun his career in a diverse entrepreneurial business, he then moved into the social housing sector, working in technical accounting and financial planning roles. He currently works as financial planning and analysis manager in a national environmental charity.
Annie started as a Communications intern with The Orchard Project in 2020, and now works as our Engagement Co-ordinator offering support with communications and donor stewardship. She is passionate about cultivating resilient food systems and increasing nature access in cities. She previously volunteered with London Food Link and wrote for London's ‘good food' magazine, The Jellied Eel. Annie is a certified yoga instructor, and enjoys creative writing, hiking, and volunteering at her local forest garden.
Antonia has over 25 years' experience in the not-for-profit sector. Antonia runs her own consultancy business, Abalone Consulting, working with charities and not-for-profit organisations to help them increase the reach, scale and impact of what they do. Her previous roles include Director of Hospice Support and Development at Hospice UK, Chief Executive of Guild Care in West Sussex, Director of Policy and Campaigns at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, and Head of Public Affairs at the Royal College of Nursing.
Job Titles:
- Orchard Expert and Member of the East of England Apples and Orchards Project, and a Fountain on Knowledge for Orchard Restoration and Apple Identification
Bob Lever, orchard expert and member of the East of England Apples and Orchards Project, and a fountain on knowledge for orchard restoration and apple identification.
Carina Millstone is a Founder of The Orchard Project and is now an Ambassador. Carina is a permaculturalist, who first noticed the opportunity in London's environmental movement - everyone seemed to agree fruit trees were a great thing, but no one was really doing anything about it. Reflecting that a vision of a London covered in fruit trees was actually not a pipe dream- the Victorians had had similar visions for a green London when they had planted London planes- she decided to make it happen while on a jog on her local common. In addition to setting up the Project with Rowena, Carina also acted as Chief Executive before handing over to Kath. Carina has worked as a sustainability consultant for Environmental Resources Management, and served as Manager of Programmes for the New Economy Coalition in the States. She has also been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University and is a Fellow of the Schumacher Institute. She has written a book entitled "Frugal Value: Designing Business for a Crowded Planet".
Job Titles:
- Freelance Tree Care Specialist
Caroline is a freelance tree care specialist, who has been working in orchards for over 20 years. She works as a tutor and assessor for The Orchard Project, as well as supporting a number of community orchards in SE London. More recently she has also become involved in the planting and care of street and park trees as part of plans to increase London's tree canopy. She is passionate about the benefits trees bring to our cities, connecting communities to nature and cooling our streets.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager for Edinburgh
Chris is our Project Manager for Edinburgh and the Lothians. With a background of working in NHS Public Health, Social Work and Voluntary Sector organisations, Chris has coordinated a variety of community food growing projects in different therapeutic settings, including hospitals, schools and community centres. Having studied horticulture and delivered accredited training courses in growing your own fruit and veg, he has become proud of eventually being able to grow beetroots. Subsequently, he loves locally grown, home made chocolate beetroot brownies.
When not found at the community garden near to where he lives, Chris is a keen forager and enjoys harvesting and preserving wild food. He also has a fascination with birds and when at times he appears vacant and distant, it can on occasion be down to him keenly listening to bird song.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Courtney is chair of the board of trustees. With over 20 years of experience in corporate sustainability, spanning environmental science, horticulture, agriculture, sustainable sourcing, technology and strategy consultancy, Courtney is a purpose led leader in sustainable development.
Originally from Lancater, Pennsylvania Courtney's educational background tells a story about her interests. She attended Paul Smiths College in the Adirondacks, a top liberal arts school for environmental science and forestry and moved onto St Joseph's University in Philadelphia for literature, sociology and pottery, studied horticulture while working in the field where she began tinkering with technology, then moved to the UK in 2011 to complete an MBA at the University of Wales.
Courtney's purpose is to future-proof how we live in a climate challenged world. She does this by fostering the understanding that humans are part of the natural world and gives people tools and skills to support innovation that brings us closer to nature. She has passion for bringing the natural environment, people, technology and business together to help organisations embed sustainability into their operations.
Courtney is building a suburban homestead in her West Sussex home with her husband and four year old son.
Daniella is our Orchard Support Coordinator. Having undertaken the Certificate in Community Orcharding in 2018, she has since been a passionate advocate of all things orchard. With a background in community engagement, she is keen to connect people with nature. Daniella is the founder of several environmental initiatives including a community garden and a fruit harvesting project, she is also an keen naturalist and is part of a creative collective.
Job Titles:
- Project Manager for Glasgow
Fergus is our Project Manager for Glasgow and Strathclyde. Fergus grew up on his family croft in the Isle of Skye and this formative education sowed the seeds of an ongoing interest in sustainable food production. He is a founder and chair of practical projects to support small scale and cooperative food growing in Scotland. He has worked on various projects including Fife Diet, where he ran the Seed Truck - a mobile education project encouraging people to explore their food culture through gardening. He loves exploring woodlands and foraging for wild food, especially fruit, and generally spending time in nature. He has a background in design and an interest in building wacky bicycle-based machines - he hopes to build a pedal-powered apple press as his next project.
Harry is Head of Fundraising at The Orchard Project. He is a passionate advocate for the role of community horticulture and arboriculture as essential to the development of thriving and resilient urban environments. With over 13 years of experience in fundraising for environmental and social causes, he has a proven track record of building strong relationships and securing significant funding to drive impactful projects. Before joining The Orchard Project, Harry played a key role in a variety of initiatives, including a major partnership with the Natural History Museum to foster nature education across the UK.
Jo Homan has the best job in the world! Being Education, Skills and Training Manager means she gets to share what she has learnt from her forest gardening background at Edible Landscapes London and go on to learn even more good things. Best of all, she is first to meet the future orchardists of the world who come on our Certificate in Community Orcharding. Here she is talking about forest gardening and here she is singing the praises of training at the Urban Tree Festival 2020. She is also working on an agroforestry project at Helen Browning's organic farm, Edible Eastbrook.
Joe joined the team in June 2024 and is our project manager for Greater Manchester. Joe comes from a multi-disciplinary background that incorporates arts and craft, food growing and horticulture. The thread that connect these worlds is community and this is what Joe is most passionate about. Her focus is to find ways to bring awareness and compassion to our communities of human and more-than-human species together. She strongly believes that if we can remember our wild selves and wild ways we will feel happier and take greater care of our shared earth! When Joe is not working she can still be found in orchards and woodlands, she loves foraging and learning about our sacred plant healers and falling off surfboards whenever there is any opportunity to be by the sea!
Kate is one of the two Project Managers for Swansea. Having worked in a commercial plant nursery for ten years, she then became Nursery Coordinator for Coeden Fach Community Tree Nursery, where she has worked for the last ten years. She also enjoys sessional work with Forest School, Swansea Community Farm and Woodland Classroom. Born and brought up in Swansea, she is proud to have already worked on many tree and orchard community planting projects, in and around her home town of Swansea. Her hobbies include walking her two dogs in the beautiful surrounding area of beaches and countryside, as well as swimming, cycling and live music. When people can't contact Kate, it is usually because she is 30 metres under water, enjoying her other hobby, scuba diving!
Kath is the CEO at The Orchard Project. She has worked for a number of environmental and community development charities. Kath began her journey by volunteering, leading nature conservation projects in London. She trained in international development and lived for a time in Zimbabwe including studying permaculture as a system of promoting food security. Kath lives in London and has always been interested in finding ways to reconnect with nature as an antidote to the hustle and bustle of city life.
Kathryn lives in Hackney, London and has been involved in several community based projects about making spaces human centred, and using food to connect and do good. She works at the Natural History Museum where she directs a programme to create a new centre to house millions of specimens and to support research to address the global biodiversity crisis.
Kathryn has worked has worked extensively in central government on policies such as climate change, forestry and community development. Kathryn is a Fellow of the School of Social Entrepreneurs.
Lewis is a London-based Project Manager. He joined in 2011 while also working on the Fruit-full Schools orchard project with Learning through Landscapes. A deep interest in ecologically sustainable food systems is the logical conclusion of Lewis' lifelong fascination with nature and ten years as an environmental educator and activist. He can often be found with his head buried in books and papers about soil microbes and mulch, and visiting organic orchards in his spare time. He's currently working on his Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design and is known for his passionate and engaging talks and workshops on all things fruit tree! A self-confessed chutney and cider-fiend he puts London's fruit bounty to good use in the kitchen.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Head of Communications and Charity
Lisa's career to date has been focused specifically on sustainable investment and finance. Lisa is currently the Head of Communications and Charity Impact at the EIRIS Foundation, a charity working to increase the positive impact of sustainable and responsible investment and drive the transformation to a more sustainable economy. Lisa was previously a Programme Director at the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF), supporting the growth of UK market demand for responsible investment and other financial services that advance sustainability through activities such as Good Money Week, the Ethical Investment Association and support for Pension Funds and Charity Investors. Lisa initially developed an interest in sustainable finance while studying Finance and Environmental Economics in South Africa. Lisa is passionate about green spaces, thriving communities and the need for people to be given opportunities to celebrate the natural world.
Lizzy is our newest London Project Manager. She has been with the charity for 8 years leading our apple-saving enterprise that transforms surplus fruit from the orchards we support in London into delicious cider! Although the cider enterprise has been discontinued, Lizzy is still organising urban harvests and working with communities to bring more orchards to London. Lizzy has a flair for social entrepreneurship, a love affair with nature and a passion to inspire more people to get outside and enjoy the simple and natural delights of life. She believes in our mission and the importance of re-wilding our cities creating more opportunities for people to experience the magic of nature for themselves but also for the planet. Lizzy believes the more we connect with nature, the more we appreciate and protect it. When she isn't working you can find Lizzy sailing, swimming, adventuring and generally enjoying life!
Louise is our Finance Manager. She has worked in charity finance for over 10 years with experience in accounts, governance, fundraising and audit. Away from work, you can find Louise on a yoga mat, hiking in the beautiful countryside and tending to her houseplants. Louise is passionate about tackling environmental issues and the positive effects that nature can have on peoples wellbeing.
Roland has a background working in community development projects internationally and in the UK. These development projects are grass-roots initiatives tackling local social and environmental issues. While there were many successes in these projects, it led him to question how effectively development approaches balanced social and environmental challenges. This question followed him for many years, and led him to enroll on the MSc programme in Holistic Science at the Schumacher College in 2008.
Rowena Ganguli is a Founder of The Orchard Project. She is passionate about all things fruit related and developed her food industry expertise working for the likes of Innocent Drinks and Abel & Cole. So far in her working life she has sourced over 100 million litres of apple juice for Innocent, managed a global supply base spanning 12 countries and 3 continents, and created ground breaking sustainability initiatives in food production and manufacturing. She strongly believes in community ownership of urban orchards as a means to bringing neighbours together with a common purpose: to nurture their local environments into productive, resilient and beautiful spaces.
Russel's main interests are: trees, beetles, bees, fungi, social justice and problem solving. Having worked for 14 years as a litigation solicitor, he left the legal profession to be closer to nature. He helped set up The Orchard Project and is also involved in Trees for Life in Scotland. In addition, he runs The Tree Musketeers, a Hackney-based volunteer group which plants and maintains trees. You can read an interview with them here. Russell established and chairs the Abney Park Cemetery Nature Reserve group, and also chairs the Ancient Tree Forum.
A fantastic teacher. So much knowledge is shared. Russell is a walking encyclopaedia.
Job Titles:
- Communications Manager in the First Instance With a Clear Subject Line.
- Communications Manager. a Former Journalist
Sarah is our Communications Manager. A former journalist with over two decades of experience in media, events, and PR, she was formerly a Storyteller at the Permaculture Association. Based in the North East of England, Sarah also runs a community allotment and orchard in her village - The Hop Garden - which was set up to share food growing skills.
Originally a Kentish lass who grew up scrumping apples from orchards with her granddad, she was surrounded by oast houses in her childhood. With 55 degrees north being one of the most northerly locations to grow hops, she's on a mission to share hop rhizomes across the region! Sarah is passionate about community growing and loves to experiment with new perennial plants to see if they're tough enough to survive Northern climes. She's also rather fond of cake (making and eating).
Sarah is our Training Co-ordinator. After over a decade working in the busy financial services industry, she is delighted to turn her passion for local food into her career by joining the Orchard Project. Sarah is a keen allotmenter and she has a lead role at her local Climate Emergency Centre. She has helped primary school children to connect with how their food is grown by leading the food growing project at a local school. The abundant little kitchen garden has been recognised at the local ‘In Bloom' awards and last year produced a bumper crop of Victoria plums which were transformed into over 50 jars of delicious jam for the community. Sarah recently gained our Level 2 Award in Forest Gardening and says ‘This is such an inspiring and fascinating course, I'm talking to everyone at the allotment about which plants we can use to increase our fruit yields and how we can make our plot ecosystems more resilient! It's such an exciting course, I can thoroughly recommend it.' In her spare time she can be found pottering in the allotment or in the kitchen turning her harvest into delicious meals or preserves. She also enjoys sharing beautiful pictures of her bountiful harvest via her Instagram account @grubbyhandshappyheart.
Job Titles:
- Joint Head of Operations and Programmes With Abby
Stephanie became joint Head of Operations and Programmes with Abby in March 2022, and is based in London. She originally joined us in 2014 as a Project Manager on our three year heritage Celebration of Orchards project, working with local volunteers to restore veteran orchards across London, and then moved on to planting new orchards with community groups. She has taught on our Level 3 orcharding certificate course, and devised the Level 2 Award in Forest Gardening. A former radio journalist, she changed career to pursue her passion for nature conservation and community food growing.
Towards the end of a career working and teaching in healthcare, Sue decided to spend more time outside. A lifelong learner, she undertook the RHS Diploma, courses in Social Therapeutic Horticulture with Thrive and feels very fortunate to have undertaken the CICO course which she loved. Sue now combines her interest in, and respect for, flora and fauna with the knowledge and experience gained in the NHS to inclusively connect people with the health and well-being benefits of nature through volunteering, freelancing and teaching in various orchards, community and school garden settings.
Tim has always been passionate about the countryside, his home county of Gloucestershire and cider. He is the owner of a small craft cider company (Orchard Revival) and spends much of his spare time supporting good causes. Tim is also a trustee of the Gloucestershire Orchard Trust. In his local village he was a parish councillor and is a trustee of the village chapel. He leads orchard restoration projects for a number of other charities such as the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, CPRE Gloucestershire and the Ernest Cook Trust. He has become renowned around the county for his endeavours leading to numerous newspaper articles, radio interviews and appearances on BBC Gardeners' World and BBC Countryfile.
Working as an orchardist since 2001, Tom has specialist knowledge in old and local apple varieties. His work includes designing and planting new orchards, carrying out orchard surveys, orchard restoration, rescue work* and running a fruit tree nursery. As well as a deep knowledge in apple-care, Tom has well-honed practical skills in grafting, pruning and green woodworking. He runs workshops for the likes of The National Trust, Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, and local community orchards. Here he is being interviewed by the Telegraph. *'Rescue work' means propagating trees whose variety can't be immediately identified or is known to be rare.
Tom Adams (Tom the Apple Man) runs a specialist organic fruit nursery, teaches on our CICO courses and also advises and supplies trees for our Welsh orchards.
Witchhazel is one of two Project Managers for the Swansea area. Prior to joining The Orchard Project, she was involved in supporting and mentoring community growing projects in and around Swansea, and also founded the Coeden Fach Community Tree Nursery where she worked as Project Coordinator for 5 years. Her love of orchards began when she ran a BTCV Natural Pioneers Millennium Project renovating an old orchard. She now has her own mini orchard consisting of 7 espaliers as an apple hedge. Witchhazel has run a sustainable woodland and orchard management business for over 15 years and is also an experienced trainer and permaculture diploma tutor. She is passionate about permaculture design, since completing the Earth Activist Training at Ragman's Lane in 2006. On the home-front, she is proud to have recently built her own timber frame home on the Gower Peninsula where she draws inspiration from the sea and also plays in a local band.