Enjoy an apple-tastic day at Tatton Park!

Bob in to Tatton Park's gardens and farm on Sunday October 6th and get to the core of Britain's finest fruit and one of Tatton's orchard treasures.

To celebrate National Apple Day and our autumn, Tatton's gardens will be blossoming with apple-tastic activities. Our younger visitors will be able to meet the 'Busy Bee', join in apple games and make ladybirds and bees. There's also a fun trail around the garden counting apples along the way to solve a saying and learn a fascinating fact about Tatton's extensive and varied 50 acre garden.

The team at Tatton have been inviting visitors to join them in celebrating the wonderful apple at this time of the year for some years now and its one of the most enjoyable events in the calendar. It seemed fitting to celebrate the popular fruit as Tatton's own extensive orchard contains around 80 varieties of apples, the majority of them from Cheshire and the North West. Varieties such as Bloody Ploughman' and Charles Ross are known to have been grown in Cheshire up to and including 1910.

Tatton's orchard is one of the most diverse in the region. The orchard was restored along with the walled kitchen garden a decade ago to reflect its heyday around the end of the 19th century. It's now well and truly at the heart of the gardens and is managed with traditional practices.

Traditionally, Tatton's orchard would have been harvested in autumn and the fruit carefully laid out in apple stores to provide essential nutrients and vitamins throughout the winter to estate staff and residents. Today, Tatton's produce is sold in the garden shop and used in the Stables restaurant and new Gardener's Cottage tea room.

There is plenty to a peel' to older visitors too. A member of Tatton's gardening team will be conducting free, hour long talks about pruning and training of fruit trees and making a successful orchard (limited spaces, book on the day).

The gardeners will also be scrumping some scrumptious varieties for you to try from Tatton's specialist orchard including the wonderful sounding Duchesses Favourites, Nanny and First and Last plus their own Golden Delicious.

At the farm visitors will be able to meet Gretel the Gloucestershire old spot, commonly known as the Orchard pig. These were commonly kept in small orchards and used to eat all the windfall apples off the ground. Folklore even has it that the black spots on their bodies were caused by the apples falling off the trees! Draw apple themed pictures in the school room or colour in your very own Gretel the Gloucester!

Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to visit Tatton this autumn, not least to enjoy over 50 acres of Tatton's gardens in their glorious full autumn colour. The Stables Restaurant and new Gardener's Cottage tea room are planning delicious apple-inspired menus and the shops will be selling apple produce.

Tatton's Head Gardener Simon Tetlow said........'The apple, like no other fruit, takes us back to our childhoods, whether scrumping, bobbing or scoffing, their taste and diversity is unmatched by any other fruit. The real joy of apple day is seeing the next generation enjoy them as much as the last.