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26
Historic Gardens 2010
BCD Special Report
Malus pumila
and the pear
Pyrus communis
2
and they were competent in the skills of
grafting*, developing new varieties and
probably cider-making.
3
Perhaps surprisingly,
the 500 or so years of Roman occupation
left no written evidence or vestige in a
place name of such activities. The Angle,
Jute and Saxon invaders who followed the
Romans left a scattering of place-names,
such as Applegarth (‘apple orchard’) and
Appleton (‘where apples grow’), and these
are thought to refer to groupings of
Malus
pumila
established in the landscape.
1
Traditional orchard cultivation began
to decline with the fall of the Roman
Empire, but the associated skills and
knowledge may have survived into the late
medieval period within settled monastic
communities. Monasteries were well suited
to developing and cultivating skills such
as planting, grafting and pruning in their
monastic orchards or ‘pomaria’.
4
Henry
VIII’s Reformation destroyed many of
these orcharding centres, but his appointed
fruitier Richard Harris introduced grafting
material (scion wood) for pears from the
Netherlands and apples from France and
established orchards at Teynham in Kent.
During the 17th century much of our
fruit growing expertise centred around
aristocratic nurserymen such as Ralph Austen
and John Tradescant, and the writer John
Evelyn, who were influenced by continental,
and particularly French fruit-growing
heritage. These wealthy travelling plantsmen
collected fruit varieties and established
orchards in the estates and large houses of
England. Orchards became widely associated
with the aristocracy, as illustrated by the
number of National Trust properties that
incorporate historic orchards. Trees were
often grown in quite formal arrangements
on dwarfing rootstocks*, but larger trees
and spacious plantings more characteristic
of our idea of ‘traditional’ orchards occurred
as well. By 1700, orchards were a dominant
landscape feature in many counties.
The first written records of cider-
making date from the reign of King
John (1199–1216). By 1700 the counties
of Worcestershire, Herefordshire,
Gloucestershire and Somerset already had
a well-established tradition of orcharding
for the production of cider and perry. This
industry developed to use up surplus fruit
that could not be taken to market due to
the region’s then inadequate infrastructure.
5
These proliferating farm orchards would
often have been dual purpose: providing
fruit to eat, cook or store for the farm as
well as juice and alcohol. Cider became a
component of the farm labourer’s wage.
Many of the extant traditional orchards in
Britain are the legacy of the small-scale mixed
farming that was predominant before the
intensification of agriculture after the second
world war. As a result, these orchards are
often found close to settlements and usually
betray the location of former farms, now
shrouded in more recent development. This
proximity to habitation facilitated some of
the cultural associations that are still apparent
today, with orchards acting as centres for
‘songs, recipes, cider, festive gatherings... wisdom
gathered over generations about pruning and
grafting, aspect and slope, soil and season,
variety and use’
.
6
The wassail is one such
example of these ‘festive gatherings’ designed
to ward off evil spirits and encourage
productive cropping in the coming year. It
still occurs at Carhampton in Somerset, and
in many other parts of the West Country.
In contrast to cider orchards, perry pear
orchards with standard trees are a rarer
but more spectacular component of the
landscape of south-west England, with the
trees growing larger and older than apple
trees. Some of the old perry pear trees
that survive today date from 18th century
plantings, in keeping with the saying,
‘Walnuts and pears, you plant for your
heirs’. Luckwill and Pollard list 101 different
varieties of perry pear from Gloucestershire
alone, many being very localised.
The 19th century was a turbulent
period for traditional orchards, but by 1870
fruit growing was on the increase again to
provide for nascent markets (such as that
for jam) supplied by a new rail network.
From 1912 onwards, the standardised
rootstocks developed by the research stations
at East Malling, Merton and Long Ashton
enabled people to maximise their planting
arrangements for productivity, with the
vigorous type M25 rootstock the most
suitable for grazed traditional orchards.
Since 1950, fewer and fewer traditional
orchards have been planted and the national
stock of standard fruit trees is now heavily
biased towards an older generation of trees
that are more than 50 years old. The 1980s
saw the beginning of a significant push to try
to reduce the national dependence on food
imports with the advent of the Common
Agricultural Policy. Funding was made
available to convert traditional orchards
into more productive farmland causing the
widespread destruction of older orchards;
a pattern which, to some extent, continues
today. Over the last century virtually all fruit
grown for the consumer market has been
produced in intensive commercial orchards
that utilise semi-dwarfing rootstocks, a range
of chemical treatments and trees planted
closely in rows along herbicide treated strips.
Traditional standard orchards are still planted
in association with the cider industry, since
sheep-grazed orchards are a component of the
commercial set-up of a few producers, like
Julian Temperley at Burrow Hill, Somerset.
Biodiversity
The ecological value of traditional orchards
has long been underestimated and they
have only recently come to be appreciated
as biodiverse islands within a largely
intensive agricultural landscape. In 2004,
over 1,800 species were found across the
plant, fungi and animal kingdoms in just
2.2 ha of traditional orchard in the Wyre
Valley Site of Special Scientific Interest
(SSSI) in Worcestershire in the first study of
its kind in the UK.
7
In April 2009, Natural
England published a report on traditional
orchard biodiversity after surveying six
traditional orchards for diversity of species
and habitat features, with a particular focus
on bryophytes*, lichens, invertebrates and
fungi. Within these groups they found a
total of 810 species, and more generally the
sites were rich in nationally rare and scarce
species and contained a varied matrix of
different habitats including veteran fruit trees,
Two illustrations from John Wright’s The Fruit Grower’s Guide published in 1892, at a time when Victorian horticulturalists were devoting tremendous energy to the study of all aspects of fruit growing