There is a particular kind of winter hush that settles over an orchard. The branches look like ink strokes against a pale sky, the ground is cold enough to make your boots feel honest, and the trees stand there quietly doing the long work of waiting.
And then, once a year, humans turn up with song, laughter, a bit of theatre, and a very old idea: gratitude has a sound, and community can be an offering.
That idea is wassailing.
In the simplest terms, wassailing is a midwinter ritual where people gather to thank fruit trees for what they have given, to ward off bad luck and “evil spirits”, and to encourage a good harvest in the year ahead. It is part celebration, part blessing, part collective pep talk to the sleeping orchard. Or, as Ranger Lesley Wertheimer puts it, “We’re about to wassail the trees, which is a pagan ritual to say thank you… and to also ensure that the trees grow well and provide even more apples next year.”
In other words: we show up, we make some joyful noise, and we tell the trees, with full sincerity, “Keep going. We’re in this with you.”
Bermondsey Wassail
Last year we visited the Bermondsey Wassail at hosted by Trees for Bermondsey and Rouel Estate Community Orchard
The Bermondsey Wassail was funded by Southwark Council’s Neighbourhoods Fund and London National Park City.
Before the event I spoke to Ranger Lesley about what a Wassail is and why it’s important.
A ritual with muddy boots and big intent
Wassailing has deep roots in British folk tradition, particularly in cider making regions. The old stories vary by county and by community, but the shape of it is recognisable: gather, sing, toast, make noise, share warmth, hope together.
What struck me most, speaking to Lesley at Bermondsey’s Rouel Estate Community Orchard, is how wassail is both ancient and completely practical.
This orchard will not produce apples in any meaningful quantity until it is about ten years old (in 5 years time). That is a long time by the standards of modern life, where we are trained to expect everything instantly, preferably by next Tuesday. So the wassail becomes a promise as much as a party.
The message to the trees is wonderfully honest: we are not expecting fruit yet, but when you do give, “do it well, please.” It is a ritual that honours patience. It makes waiting feel active.
The day the trees got a choir
The soundscape matters. Wassailing is not a quiet, reverent ceremony. It is noisy on purpose.
There is music, and applause, and the bright shock of voices in winter air. There are lines spoken together, sung to the branches, aimed at the root and the bark as if the orchard itself is listening. You can feel how it turns a group of people into a single thing for a moment, like a flock that has decided where to fly.
In the last couple of years, around a hundred people have come to sing to these trees. That number is its own kind of magic. It says the orchard is not just a collection of saplings, it is a shared project with an audience, a community with a chorus.
And, because every good ritual deserves a bit of myth, “Ranger Chris is our wonderful green man.” That detail alone tells you everything about the tone: serious joy. A wink and a blessing at the same time.
Meet the orchard, and the person who knows its names
Lesley, one of the Rangers, has been mentoring with The Orchard Project, supporting the development of this “rural community orchard”, even as it grows in a world that often forgets fruit can be local.
She points out their only cider apple tree, and offers the sort of practical truth you only get from someone who has actually stood next to the thing.
Cider apples are not the apples you eat straight from the branch. They are full of tannins, “very, very bitter”, “very dry”. They are built for pressing, fermenting, and turning into something that warms you from the inside on a dark evening.
There is also a mini plot twist: planting a cider apple tree might not have been the best idea if you are hungry, but it made sense at the time. The project hoped to link with a local microbrewery, which later went out of business. Still, the orchard adapts. It always does. And anyway, as Leslie reminds us, you can make cider with many kinds of apple, as long as they are fallen from the tree.
The orchard itself is a small ark of possibility. There are now 28 trees, and they are not just apples. There are pears, cherries, plums, apricots, peach, mulberry, medlar. Around them is an edible fruit hedge, planted with about 3,500 plants.
That number lands like a drumbeat. Three and a half thousand. Not symbolic. Not decorative. A real, deliberate abundance.
Why we still need wassail, and not just for tradition’s sake
It is tempting to treat wassailing as charming folklore, a seasonal performance that belongs in the “nice to have” column.
But listen to Lesley and the purpose becomes sharp.
“We’ve got to stop thinking the only apples you can get are the ones that are imported from… a long way away.” She is talking about taste, yes, but also about climate, supply chains, and what it means to live responsibly in a city.
Flying apples in or shipping them across oceans is normalised, but it is also absurd when you step back far enough to see it clearly. Local fruit is not just a nostalgic idea. It is a practical climate response, and a way of rebuilding food connection at the scale of a neighbourhood.
Wassail, in that context, is a cultural tool. It is a way of getting people to care about trees before the fruit arrives. It makes stewardship social, memorable, and fun.
If you want an orchard to survive in a city, it needs more than good soil and diligent watering. It needs witnesses. It needs stories. It needs people who feel like the trees are theirs, not in an ownership sense, but in the sense of belonging.
Wassailing builds that.
What actually happens at a wassail?
Every wassail has its own local flavour, but the essentials are delightfully consistent:
Gather in midwinter – often in January, when the year still feels new and the trees are dormant.
Thank the trees – explicitly. Out loud. As a group.
Make noise – singing, clapping, sometimes banging pots, sometimes chanting. The point is to drive out bad luck and wake up good energy.
Toast the orchard – traditionally with cider, but always with the spirit of sharing.
Invite a bit of theatre – a green man, ribbons, poems, call-and-response songs, whatever your community enjoys.
Leave with a stronger “we” – because the orchard is not just trees, it is relationships.
The orchard as a long-term relationship
Wassailing is a reminder that fruit is not produced by convenience. It is produced by seasons, soil, patience, and care.
In a culture that often treats nature like a backdrop, wassail turns nature into a partner in conversation. You do not just take. You turn up, you thank, you encourage, you commit. You lend the trees your voices for an afternoon, and in return they lend you their future.
And when the singing ends, someone says, “We did it. We did it.” Not because the apples have arrived, but because the community has.
If you are lucky, you go home with cold cheeks, warm hands, and the sense that you have participated in something both ancient and urgently modern: a local answer to a global problem, sung into the branches of a young orchard that is still learning how to be an orchard.
Because the best time to care about a tree is not when it is heavy with fruit.
It is now, while it is still becoming.
Keep an eye on our Instagram page for Wassail Events happening near you.
