We value orchards, in part, for their biodiversity – for the important opportunities for wildlife they provide, especially in the form of the dead wood and hollows associated with old fruit trees.
Yet orchards are much less permanent and resilient than many habitats. They can only be sustained by regular interventions.
One of the values of fruit trees is that, compared with many species of tree, they live fast and die young. They provide ‘veteran’ habitats quite quickly. Indeed, few apple trees will live more than 120 years, and they will display veteran characteristics long before that. Cherries and plums have even shorter lives, and grow old even sooner. Yet all this has an obvious downside. Even if they are not deliberately destroyed, to make way for houses or arable land, orchards will disappear from the landscape - or they will turn into something else – with some speed, unless maintained by re-planting and other actions. In particular, as our Orchards East surveyors have repeatedly found, old farmhouse orchards will gradually take on the characteristics of a garden – or a pony paddock. Orchards of a more ‘commercial’ character, in contrast – which are often in more isolated locations – sometimes develop gradually into secondary woodland.
A few weeks ago I was exploring old orchards in Suffolk, with friends Gerry Barnes and Bob Lever. We visited two examples on one farm, both of which are marked on the old 1:25000 Ordnance Survey map, surveyed around 1960. One, located next to the farmhouse, was already in existence by the time the First Edition OS 6-inch map was surveyed in the 1880s. It contains only a couple of old pear trees, standing on the lawn of what is now a pleasant garden. The other was more interesting. Lying some way to the east of the farm, it was planted in the 1920s and originally covered 24 acres (c, 10 hectares). It was largely grubbed out in the 1960s but its northern section survived until 1987, when the trees were toppled in the great gale. The area was only partly cleared. Lines of Bramleys survived as ‘phoenix’ trees and continued to bear fruit until a few years ago. But the area was gradually colonised by hawthorn, ash and oak and these have now over-topped the fallen trees, most of which are now dead or dying. The orchard has thus become a small and attractive area of woodland: it is developing as an important haven for wildlife in its own right, with a range of niches and habitats – including the rotten wood of the decaying apple trees.
Orchards are fragile, and most, if not maintained, will evolve into areas much biologically less interesting than the little wood just described, such as gardens or grass fields. Surveying, recording and researching orchards is of vital importance. But maintaining existing examples, and planting new ones, is what really matters.
Tom Williamson