Glasgow, Scotland-based documentary, editorial and portrait photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert

It’s always great to get out and photograph in your own community, even more so when it’s an event you’ve known about for a couple of years but never quite managed to make it along to. But today, I went along to listen to the singing and view the dancing at the ‘Wassailing of the apple trees’, in the orchards of Queen’s Park, in Glasgow Southside.

Colour photo of an apple tree, the image has shallow depth of field, and behind the tree are pictured some men, they are slightly out of focus,. — *Men, from a variety of choirs, sing songs to the apple trees to awaken them after a cold, dark winter. ©Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert 2026*

In the foreground a man plays the fiddle, while in mid distance some morris dfancers wearing red tartan dance, watched by a small crowd of people. — *Members of the Border Reivers Morris Glasgow club dance, and play music, to honour and awaken the nearby apple trees after a cold, dark winter. ©Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert 2026*

I knew nothing about wassailing, but the internet tells me it’s an established folk custom to wake the apple trees after their cold, dark winter, and to bless them, hoping for a fruitful harvest in the seasons ahead.

Today’s event was all the more colourful thanks to the dancing of the Border Reivers Morris Glasgow club, with their assorted musicians in accompaniment, and a group of singers who sang the ‘Govanhill Orchard Wassail’ song, and others, accompanied by anyone who wished to view the lyrics via scanning a QR code with their iPhone to retrieve song lyrics and to sing along. Even folk customs have QR codes these days.