- Sub-categories:
- Culinary pears2
- Dessert pears24
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.
- Pear trees
Beurre Hardy
A classic French pear with a very good flavour, but grows best in a warm sheltered situation. - Pear trees
Beurre Superfin
Beurre Superfin is a 19th century French pear variety, considered one of the best for flavour and texture. - Pear trees
Black Worcester
The oldest true English pear, 16th century or earlier. Ideal for stewed pears. - Pear trees
Concorde
A marriage of Conference and Comice - Concorde is easy to grow, heavy crops, excellent flavour. - Pear trees
Conference
A popular and reliable English pear, Conference is perfectly suited to the English climate. - Pear trees
Humbug
Humbug is an unusual pear variety, the fruits have distinctive green and yellow stripes. - Pear trees
Invincible
Invincible is a good-flavour pear which can cope with more difficult conditions than most pears. - Pear trees
Louise Bonne of Jersey
An attractive red-flushed French pear variety with sweet melting flesh. - Pear trees
Moonglow
A high quality early season dessert and culinary pear, very resistant to fireblight. - Pear trees
Obelisk®
A useful dwarf pear tree for small gardens, it grows with a tidy upright habit and is self-fertile. - Pear trees
Onward
Onward is high quality dessert pear, related to Doyenne du Comice but easier to grow. - Pear trees
Packham's Triumph
Perhaps the best known Australian pear, producing large quantities of small but sweet-flavoured pears. - Pear trees
Williams
Williams is a classic English pear, also known as Bartlett, with good flavour and quite easy to grow.
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.