Page 25 - HG10

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BCD Special Report
Historic Gardens 2010
25
The Traditional
British Orchard
A precious and fragile resource
Henry Johnson
T
raditional orchards have a number
of features that distinguish them
from similar types of land use,
such as commercial orchards, and similar
types of habitat, such as parkland.
Natural England (formerly English
Nature) supplies the following definition:
Traditional orchards are characterised by
widely spaced standard* or half-standard
fruit trees, of old and often scarce varieties,
grown on vigorous rootstocks* and planted
at low densities, usually less than 150 trees
per hectare in permanent grassland.
They will contain at least five fruit trees
that have been grown as ‘standards’
and therefore have crowns high enough
for livestock to graze beneath.
Apples are the most common fruit in
traditional orchards, but sites usually have a
mix of apple, pear, plum, damson and walnut,
although rarely with all types represented.
Cobnut (hazel) and cherry orchards are also
a characteristic feature of certain regions.
The spacing of the trees varies according
to fruit variety, with plums and cobnuts
sometimes as little as 3m apart, apples 8–10m
apart and cherry and perry pear orchards with
spacings often over 20m. The planting pattern
may be regular but successive re-plantings
have often blurred any original order.
Traditional orchards are managed
extensively. This means little or no use of
fertilisers or herbicides beneath the trees,
or chemical insecticides and fungicides
among the branches. The grassland sward
is either grazed (by sheep or cattle) or
allowed to grow and cut for hay.
There are currently around 24,600 ha
of traditional orchard in the UK, with
the average size being about 1 ha.
History
The orchard has been a component of
the British landscape for many centuries
and has a complex history. DNA evidence
strongly supports the theory that of the
almost 3,000 apple varieties that populate
British orchards, all are the un-hybridised
descendants of the wild sweet apple
Malus
pumila
of the Tian Shan region of Central
and Inner Asia, and unrelated to the native
European crab apple
Malus sylvestris
.
1
The Romans are traditionally credited
with introducing both the sweet apple
*Words followed by an asterisk are defined in the glossary below
A traditionally grazed orchard in Conderton, Worcestershire with mistletoe and dead wood habitats, key features of traditional orchard ecosystems