Glossary · Culture
Apple Day
Definition
An annual celebration of orchards and local apple varieties held on and around 21 October, established in Britain in 1990 and now marked by orchard groups, museums and cider producers.
- Subject
- Culture
In more detail
Apple Day was conceived as a way of making the case for local distinctiveness — the argument that a county’s cultivars, orchards and landscape are worth keeping because they are that county’s. It has become the main public occasion at which apple identification, tasting and orchard conservation reach a general audience.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Culture
Wassail
A midwinter orchard custom in which people gather round a chosen apple tree to drink its health, make noise, and pour or hang cider and soaked toast in its branches, traditionally to secure the coming crop.
Culture
Community orchard
An orchard owned or managed collectively for public benefit rather than commercial fruit production, used for local varieties, education, events and habitat.
Fruit
Heritage variety
An old cultivar surviving outside mainstream commercial propagation, kept going by collections, enthusiasts and old orchards. The term implies age and rarity, not quality.
Orchard
Traditional orchard
An orchard of widely spaced standard or half-standard trees on vigorous rootstocks, with a permanent grassland floor that is grazed or mown. In the United Kingdom it is a recognised priority habitat.
Where to go next
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Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Traditional Orchard Habitat Inventory and orchard loss surveys
People’s Trust for Endangered Species / Natural England · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24. The traditional orchard campaign pages were reached and confirmed, but the orchard-loss figures CiderHQ wants from this body sit in survey outputs rather than on the campaign page, and were not located in this pass.
Gloucestershire Orchard Trust · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24