Orchards & Pomology

Pomology, the specialised study and cultivation of fruit and nut trees, underpins the management of traditional orchards—a core feature of landscape heritage explicitly highlighted in The New Sylva.

Unlike intensive modern monoculture systems, traditional orchards combine widely spaced, large-grafted trees with an understory of permanent pasture or a rich herb layer. This low-intensity silvicultural layout provides immense ecological value, offering critical structural habitats for cavity-nesting birds, rare lichens, and pollinating insects.

Cultivating fruit trees like Domestic Apple (Malus domestica) and Pear (Pyrus communis) requires highly skilled propagation methods, including traditional tree grafting, to preserve old cultivars that would otherwise lose their distinct flavours and growth traits through genetic lottery. By maintaining these orchards, managers protect irreplaceable regional biodiversity, preserve ancient genetic pools, and secure sustainable yields of non-timber forest products that enrich local human communities and rural economies.

Orchard products include culinary fruit (e.g. apples and pears) and fruit for juicing: apples for cider and pears for perry. They can also produce edible fruits we know as nuts, including walnuts and hazelnuts.