Advice On Buying Pear Trees

How to Choose the Right Pear Trees for Your Garden

Garden Size

Your available space determines the size of pear tree you can grow.

1. Pear Trees trained on Wires or Posts: These space-saving shapes are grown flat against walls, fences, posts or over arches.
• A cordon is the smallest option and allows you to pack a lot of varieties onto a typical garden fence, while fans and espaliers are great for covering a larger area.
• Some of our pear trees are available as ready-made cordons, or else they are easily trained from a maiden.
• We do not sell pear trees as fans or espaliers: buy a maiden, and prune it into the desired shape.
  
  
2. Free Standing Pear Trees: "Proper" trees that give the biggest crops.
• Bush trees have a short main trunk about 60cm tall, and a final height of about 3 metres: ideal for the average garden.
• Half standard trees have a main trunk of about 1.2 metres, and a final height of 4-5 metres. They need space, and a secure ladder to harvest when mature.
• Most of our pear trees are available as ready to go bushes & half standards, with the most important formative pruning already done.
  
  
3. Mini Patio Pear Trees: A selection of the most popular varieties are available as dwarf versions, which stay small thanks to specialist grafting and rootstocks.
• Dwarf trees produce the same fruit as any other form of the same variety, it is only the tree itself that grows very slowly.
• They are ideal for growing in pots and small gardens.

We sell our pear trees in 4 starting sizes:

1. A year old, sapling pear tree is called a maiden and can be trained into any size or shape you desire.
   This is the cheapest option, but will also take the longest to bear fruit. If you want to make a fan or espalier, you must start with a maiden.
2. For safe and easy harvesting in a limited space, a cordon pear tree is short and trained on a wire.
3. A bush shaped tree great for the average garden, with a short trunk that will keep its final height down to about 3 metres.
4. If you want a big tree as soon as possible, a half standard is the best size for you.
5. All our pear trees are grown on "Quince A" rootstocks. These are the best "universal" rootstocks, producing a tree 4-5 metres tall if you let it grow freely. They are also fine for cordons & other trained shapes.

Pear Tree Pollination

Even self-fertile pear trees crop better if they are cross pollinated, and most varieties need a pollination partner (a different pear variety that is in flower at about the same time) to crop at all.
For more details, see our guide to Pear Tree Pollination, or use our interactive Pollination Checker to quickly find partners for a specific variety.

Which Pear Variety Should you Choose?

• Eaters tend to have very soft and juicy flesh, with a sweet flavour.
• Cookers tend to have firm to hard, crisp flesh that keeps its shape after cooking. They usually have a more acidic flavour and gritty texture when eaten fresh.
• Invincible is an excellent dual-purpose variety: it's a cooker early in the season and ripens into a very nice eater.