Frome’s winter wassail returns with free apple trees and cider celebrations

Wassail away the winter blues and raise a toast to the town’s trees. On Saturday, February 8, the Weylands Wassail returns to Frome, offering an afternoon of merriment, music, and mulled cider. The midwinter tradition isn’t just about singing to the apple trees for a fruitful harvest—it’s also about bringing the community together for a celebration packed with dancing, crafts, and a special tree-mendous giveaway.

This year, wassail attendees are invited to adopt a free dwarf heritage apple tree. The specially created dwarf trees will be around six feet tall when fully grown, making them ideal for smaller spaces, and can be grown in a container.

The saplings are ready for adoption and are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the event. For anyone unable to attend, there is another opportunity to adopt one of the saplings on Monday, February 10 between 3pm and 4.30pm from outside the rangers’ yard in Victoria Park.

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Town rangers Asia and Toni will be hosting a free willow bird feeder-making session at the wassail - booking required - previously planned for Apple Day 2024.

Everyone is welcome to join in the wassail fun between 1.30pm and 3.30pm, with Morris dancing from Bounds of Selwood, a wassail procession and ceremony, crafts, singing, and live music from Frome Street Bandits. There will be hot mulled cider and apple juice from Dowding’s on sale, and Frome Families for the Future will be helping wassailers to make willow wassail crowns, for a suggested donation of £1.

Cllr Anne Hills said: “Join us at the Weylands Wassail to warm your winter cockles and celebrate the community orchard! The orchard at Weylands was created by Charly of WoodfortheTrees and Pavla of Hejgro, with the TreeGroup, and help from FROGs and Shared Earth – a truly local endeavour.

“Thank you to Annabelle and Jamie for all their hard work creating the wassail performance, and to everyone who is part of this lovely annual event. As you may remember, we had to cancel the Apple Day event last year due to bad weather, which stopped us from running a willow bird feeder-making session and handing out lots of heritage apple tree saplings. Happily, it was a pleasure postponed, and you can do both at the wassail”

The Weylands Wassail is free to attend and takes place from 1.30pm to 3.30pm in the green space behind Weylands, via the Riverside footpath on Welshmill Lane. Booking is required for the willow bird feeder-making session only, as spaces are limited – book online at https://bit.ly/bird-feeder-session-8-feb.

Find the wassail location via What3words at https://w3w.co/drives.half.pose or Google Maps at https://maps.app.goo.gl/U6EmVVv3hxQZ5Lf47.