Orchard

An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit or nut-producing trees which are grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive purpose. A fruit garden is generally synonymous with an orchard, although it is set on a smaller non-commercial scale and may emphasize berry shrubs in preference to fruit trees.

Most temperate-zone orchards are laid out in a regular grid, with a grazed or mown grass or bare soil base that makes maintenance and fruit gathering easy.

Many Orchards where originally planted alongside Public Houses so that the fruit could be harvested to make alcohol, such as cider and wine. Many traditional pubs still maintain their orchards as to keep with tradition but alcohol is rarely made from its fruit. The Old Orchard in Devon still produces cider from its orchard.

Orchards are often concentrated near bodies of water, where climatic extremes are moderated and blossom time is retarded until frost danger is past.

The forest garden is a food production system that is closely related to the orchard. A move towards more ecologically-friendly coffee production has led to forest-garden production of coffee. Brazil nuts and rubber are produced in such a method in some areas.

Often, mixed orchards are planted. In Europe, quince is sometimes planted along with apples.

Read more about Orchard:  Meadow Orchard (Streuobstwiese), Crops, Layout, Orchards By Region, Towns Associated With Orchards, Airports Associated With Orchards, Historical Orchards, Orchard Conservation and Promotion Organisations and Schemes Within England

Famous quotes containing the word orchard:

    ... transform
    into our flesh our
    deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
    living in the orchard and being
    hungry, and plucking
    the fruit.
    Denise Levertov (b. 1923)

    This saying good-by on the edge of the dark
    And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark
    Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
    An orchard away at the end of the farm....
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    Some spring the white man came, built him a house, and made a clearing here, letting in the sun, dried up a farm, piled up the old gray stones in fences, cut down the pines around his dwelling, planted orchard seeds brought from the old country, and persuaded the civil apple-tree to blossom next to the wild pine and the juniper, shedding its perfume in the wilderness. Their old stocks still remain.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)