Our Trees: Fruit Varieties on Site

We have planted a diverse range of heritage and modern fruit trees, chosen to suit our northern climate and to give a long season of blossom and fruit. Here are the varieties growing in the orchard.

Apples

• Blenheim Orange – a good dual-purpose apple for dessert or cooking. Late season. Best for the east coast; needs reasonably favoured conditions to ripen.
• Cox's Orange Pippin – best for the east coast, needs favoured conditions to ripen (sheltered, warm and less rain, so not ideal for Scotland but can work in some locations). Ribston Pippin tends to work better for Scotland.
• Fortune – English, from Laxtons nursery, Bedford 1904; a Cox cross. Grows well across Scotland. Ripens mid season.
• Katy – originally from Sweden (a James Grieve cross, so has Scottish ancestry); very hardy, a lovely looking, productive, scab-resistant variety. Used for juice and cider making. Grows on the Western Isles and very far north.
• Lord Lambourne – the RHS says this is a particularly suitable apple for northerly, colder and higher-rainfall areas, with sweet, juicy fruit. Ripens mid season.
• Saturn – consistently good, clean and disease free; 1997 East Malling, Kent. A very good modern variety, easy to grow. Grows well in Glasgow and has proved reliable and scab free. Late to ripen.
• Worcester Pearmain – classic hardy eater, with a “strawberry” taste.
• Bramley's Seedling – excellent across Scotland, commonly grown for good reason. Very prolific and keeps well. Fairly late season. We have Bramley Clone 20, a smaller-growing variation suitable for smaller gardens.
• Lord Derby – a great heavy cropper, not too vigorous, suiting a small garden and for growing as cordons.
• Monarch – late season, older (1888) variety. A good alternative to Bramley, a bit sweeter. Scab resistant, so does better in areas of heavier rainfall.

Pears

• Concorde – 1965, Kent, East Malling. A Conference / Comice cross, similar in hardiness to Conference but rather sweeter.
• Williams Bon Chrétien – 1765 UK, possibly 1500s in France. An eating pear that also keeps its shape on cooking. Not as hardy as some but well worth growing in more favoured spots. Known in the US as the Bartlett Pear and widely used for canning.

Plums & Gages

• Imperial Gage (also known as Denniston's Superb) – the most reliably cropping gage.
• Marjorie's Seedling plum.
• Victoria plum.

Damson

• Merryweather Damson

Cherries

• Stella
• Summer Sun

Nuts

• Filbert – Pearson's Prolific / Nottingham Early.

Medlar

• Nottingham