There is no exact, dedicated national hectare figure tracking perry pears in England because they are rarely grown in large, modern commercial monocultures. Instead, they are historically integrated into the UK's broader 24,600 hectares of traditional orchards. These encompass multiple fruit varieties, mainly bush orchards as well as mixed standard trees and grazing pasture especially in Gloucestershire Herefordshire and Worcestershire.
The National Collection at Hartpury is now the largest single concentration of perry pears in the country.
But important are the scattered local parish orchards and single trees.
You may ask why they aren't measured like commercial pears given Britains obsession with cataloguing. For instance commercial pear orchards now cover 702 hectares, dominated by dessert varieties like Conference (93%). The answer is unlike these modern commercial dwarf trees on quince rootstock , standard perry pear on their own rootstock trees grow massive and can live for up to 300 years, meaning they mostly survive as scattered, historic field anchors and in old small orchards rather than the modern tightly gridded plantation blocks. My perry pear trees are not as large as this magnificent specimens
but still growing; but on quince so will never reach that size. This year I am going to try air layering to establish a couple of trees on their own roots. By the time they are this large they will have outlasted me! As the saying goes “… plant pears for your heirs”.
