Glossary · Orchard
Grubbing up
Also written grubbing, orchard clearance. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
Removing an orchard by pulling out the trees and their roots. In Britain and much of Europe it was carried out at scale in the later twentieth century, in places with public grant support.
- Subject
- Orchard
- Also written
- grubbing, orchard clearance
In more detail
Grubbing was driven by economics — low fruit prices, high labour cost in standard orchards, and the greater return of arable land or of bush replanting — and in the 1970s and 1980s by explicit European schemes to reduce fruit-tree area. The effect on traditional orchard habitat was severe and is not reversible on any short timescale, because the value of the habitat lies in the age of the trees.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
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.
Orchard
Veteran tree
An old tree carrying the features that come with age — hollowing trunk, decaying heartwood, dead limbs, loose bark and cavities — which together make it habitat for species that live nowhere else in the orchard.
Orchard
Orchard renewal
Replacing failing or unproductive trees, either individually within a standing orchard or by clearing and replanting a block. Renewal planning is what keeps an orchard in production across generations.
Perry
Perry pear conservation
The organised work of finding, identifying, propagating and replanting surviving perry pear cultivars, most of which exist as a handful of ageing trees.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
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
Hereford Museum of Cider collections and interpretation
Hereford Cider Museum Trust · museum · retrieved 2026-08-24