Orchards

A traditional orchard is an area of standard fruit trees in grazed grassland.  Trees in traditional orchards decay quickly and so providing homes for birds and bats. In the winter fallen fruit is important for birds such as fieldfare and redwings.  Orchards often contain other important habitats like as hedgerows, ponds and dead wood.

Herefordshire is an important fruit producing county, but we have lost most of our traditional orchards in favour of intensively managed bush orchards.  These produce more fruit but lack much of the wildlife and landscape value.