Save the great British apple! Home-grown sales have fallen for years as supermarkets fly in bland imports. Now a patriotic fightback is underway Since World War II, two-thirds of our orchards have been dug up Sales of apples have fallen by 6.3 per cent over the last year The Rivers Nursery Orchard near Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, is the Holy Grail for fruit-tree enthusiasts. The oldest nursery in Britain, it was founded in 1725 by a genius of the fruit world, John Rivers. And his descendant, Thomas Rivers, developed the Conference Pear at, yes, a pear conference in the late 19th century. Native: Many British orchards have disappeared, drastically reducing our own home-grown varieties Next month, an international group of horticulturalists and fruit experts will make a pilgrimage to the orchard to pay homage to the Rivers family, who perfected the art of fruit breeding. In his day, Thomas Rivers bred more than 75 new varieties of apple, peach, nectarine, plum, cherry, apricot and pear. Sadly, the site the green-fingered visitors will see won't be as magnificent as it once was. As late as 1950, there were 300 acres of orchard here, crammed with 11,000 apple trees, 6,000 pear trees and 5,000 plum trees. But in 1985, the site was sold for development and the vast majority of the orchards was dug up. These days, the Rivers Nursery Orchard is a fragment of its former self. It is down to under five acres and 700 trees, cultivated by an admirable band of local volunteers. This orchard's story is the story of all Britain's orchards. Since World War II, two-thirds of our orchards have been dug up. And, as those orchards have disappeared, so has our taste for apples - particularly our own home-grown varieties, many of them first bred here in Sawbridgeworth. Overall consumption of fruit has declined in these junk-food-obsessed times - but it is the apple that has particularly suffered. According to a new survey by market research firm Kantar, sales of apples have fallen by 6.3 per cent over the last year. Decline: Sales of apples across the varieties have fallen by 6.3¿per cent over the last year As British-bred varieties have slumped in popularity, foreign apples have thrived. Cox's are in decline while Gala and Braeburn - developed in New Zealand - are booming. Old varieties are losing out to new ones that are being aggressively branded and marketed. Britain's fourth most popular apple, Pink Lady, is even trademarked, meaning British farmers aren't allowed to grow it. Last year, a new brand, Joya, was advertised as though it were some kind of power snack, with the blurb: "Perfect for teens on the move or into sports." Yet overall apple consumption among the young is in decline. While the over-75s eat an average 195g of apple a week, the under-30s consume only 100g. In a bid to revive the flagging market, English Apples and Pears, the trade association for the fruit growers, is targeting immigrants to Britain, who tend not to be apple eaters, and encouraging them to make novel apple dishes, such as Indian lamb dhansak and Polish apple cake. They advise using Bramley apples, another variety in decline. Assistant chairman of the Rivers Nursery Site and Orchard Group, Joseph Fitzgerald, 58, says: "The disappearance of orchards from Britain has been slow year-on-year since the war, but the overall effect is seismic. With the decline of the Empire after the war, we stopped shipping out apples and started shipping in cheaper ones. And you can't go back - once you've dug up an orchard, it's gone for good. You've lost that link between the landscape and people, between people and local produce. We give tours to local primary school children who are amazed to see apples taken from a local tree. Waste: Despite all the wonderful apples we have growing in Britain, such as the Cox Orange Pippins, many supermarkets prefer to import The Sixties and Seventies marketing campaign for America's Golden Delicious apple has often been blamed for the decline in native orchards. But there are other reasons that pre-date the arrival of the Golden Delicious, particularly the need to turn much of the countryside over to more crucial foods during World Wars I and II. But the biggest reason is the growing power of the supermarket giants over our fruit consumption during the past half-century. The retailers will say they are only giving us what they want, but in truth, they are leading our tastes. They wanted apples all year round - including out of the British season - and they wanted apples that could be shipped and stored for long periods. They also demanded disease-free apples with a decent profit margin and guaranteed consistency of shape. The small-scale orchards of Britain couldn't guarantee these things. So their delicate, charmingly odd-looking apples, available only in season and prone to disease, lost out to large-scale producers and foreign big boys. Varieties such as Gala are available all year round because they can be grown in the southern and northern hemispheres. A single Gala tree can produce a much higher yield than native British breeds. Only 65 per cent of apples on a Cox's tree are good enough to be sold as "class one" in the supermarket, while 90 per cent of the fruit on a Gala tree qualifies. A "class one" apple must conform to strict guidelines about size, shape and taste. Class two, which allows for greater variety in appearance, is rarely bought by the supermarkets. Thus, many of these cosmetically imperfect, but otherwise perfectly tasty, apples go to waste. Therefore, apples are now bred on an industrial scale, for efficiency of production, uniform size and blemish-free peel. All at the cost of taste. "The taste becomes secondary," says Mr Fitzgerald. "If people were given a traditional "heritage" variety, they just wouldn't know if it was OK to eat. But the uniform apples, like Pink Lady or Jazz, fit the bill for an urbanised society, which likes the comfort of familiarity. Still, though, at the Rivers Nursery Orchard, there remains a small patch of the idyllic fruit orchards that once covered Hertfordshire, much of East England, Somerset and the Vale of Evesham in Worcestershire. The names of the 70 varieties of fruit growing here have a poetry all of their own: Barnack Beauty, Gascoyne's Scarlet, Orleans Reinette. There is an Egremont Russet, already turning a pretty bronze, even though it is some time till the first Sunday in October, when the apples will be harvested by volunteers, to be sold as they are or turned into cider. In one corner of the orchard, there are Pitmaston Pineapples - a variety of apple that grows in a distinctive pineapple shape. Although it's early in the season, you can see its tropical outline. British apples: The delicious Egremont Russet will be ready to eat in October The orchard, once in disrepair, has been restored by the volunteers following the advice laid out by Thomas Rivers in The Orchard House, his 1850 treatise that sold more than 12,000 copies, making it a bestseller of its day. The volunteers have planted tall beech hedges on the borders of the orchard to keep out the wind and produce an ideal micro-climate for apple-growing. They have cut back the grass to stop it competing for the nitrogen that is so vital for good apples. And when an old tree dies, they replace it with a young heritage variety. Now, the orchard seethes with life. Woodpeckers have pecked countless holes in some of the trees, without causing any damage to the fruit, which is picked before it becomes ripe enough for the birds to eat. Insects fill the air, trees and grass - including the rare noble chafer beetle and goldenrod crab spider. Scenes like this needn't be lost for good. Today, there are some small signs of recovery in the growth of community orchards such as these. And Apple Days, held in the autumn during the fruit-picking season when people can come and pick their own, are becoming increasingly popular. There is even a thriving apple community in London, run by the London Orchard Project, which plants small orchards in the city. Sales of heritage fruit trees are up, too. There is one final piece of the jigsaw, though. We all need to choose to eat more of our ancient apple varieties - and give a wide berth to the bland, blemish-free imports. Harry Mount is the author of How England Made the English (published by Viking).