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  3. Pear trees

Pear trees

We have an extensive range of pear trees and can advise on choosing the best pear trees for your garden or orchard project.

  • Benita Rafzas is an unusual cross between an Asian and European pear.

  • Beth pear trees
    An easy and reliable early-season pear, with a very good melting flavour.

  • Beurre Hardy pear trees
    A classic French pear with a very good flavour, but grows best in a warm sheltered situation.

  • Black Worcester pear trees
    The oldest true English pear, 16th century or earlier. Ideal for stewed pears.

  • A very old French culinary pear, dating back to the reign of Louis XIV.

  • Clapps Favourite pear trees
    An attractive red-flushed early-season pear from the USA.

  • Concorde pear trees
    A marriage of Conference and Comice - Concorde is easy to grow, heavy crops, excellent flavour.

  • Conference pear trees
    A popular and reliable English pear, Conference is perfectly suited to the English climate.

  • Doyenne du Comice pear trees
    Doyenne du Comice is arguably the best flavoured of all pears.

  • Fondante d'Automne pear trees
    An old fashioned French pear with a notably sweet flavour.

  • A traditional 18th century Belgian pear with a notably rich sweet flavour.

  • A reliable early 20th century American pear, with a sweet creamy flesh.

  • Humbug is an unusual pear variety, the fruits have distinctive green and yellow stripes.

  • Invincible pear trees
    Invincible is a good-flavour pear which can cope with more difficult conditions than most pears.

  • Josephine de Malines pear trees
    A classic 19th century winter pear with a high quality flavour.

  • Louise Bonne of Jersey pear trees
    An attractive red-flushed French pear variety with sweet melting flesh.

  • Merton Pride pear trees
    One of the best English pears, with a notably juicy buttery flesh.

  • Moonglow pear trees
    A high quality early season dessert and culinary pear, very resistant to fireblight.

  • A useful dwarf pear tree for small gardens, it grows with a tidy upright habit and is self-fertile.

  • Onward pear trees
    Onward is high quality dessert pear, related to Doyenne du Comice but easier to grow.

  • Perhaps the best known Australian pear, producing large quantities of small but sweet-flavoured pears.

  • Sensation pear trees
    A red-coloured sport of the popular Williams pear.

  • Williams pear trees
    Williams is a classic English pear, also known as Bartlett, with good flavour and quite easy to grow.

  • Winter Nelis pear trees
    A late-season dessert pear from Belgium, with an excellent sweet flavour.

How to choose Pear trees

Pears are related to apples, and most of the horticultural requirements and challenges of apples apply also to growing pear trees. However pear trees are a bit more demanding than apple trees - they prefer slightly warmer conditions and are a bit less tolerant of soil and situation, and crop yields are lower.

On the plus side, pear trees are less susceptible to the various pests and diseases commonly experienced with apples.

When it comes to flavour, pears have an aura of exclusivity which you don't tend to find in apples.

Although there are some culinary pear varieties, all the ones we offer are dessert pears - good for eating fresh, but also useful for culinary purposes too.

Pears are fundamentally self-sterile so will require a pollination partner, in other words a compatible pear tree of a different variety growing nearby. Even the varieties we list as self-fertile will be far more productive with a pollination partner. Conference is probably the only pear variety that is reliably self-fertile.