Why the sward underneath matters so much

An orchard is not a lawn with trees in it. Traditional British orchards — the standard apples, pears, cherries and damsons on vigorous rootstocks — grew up with a grass sward beneath them, grazed by sheep in some counties and cut for hay in others. That history leaves us a useful instruction: the ground cover is part of the system, not an inconvenience to be scalped. Get the balance right and you gain wildflowers, pollinators, overwintering habitat and a soft, spongy surface that holds moisture. Get it wrong and you can starve the trees of water, compact their roots and, in the worst case, ring-bark a trunk with a strimmer in a single afternoon.

Mowing paths: the skeleton of a good orchard floor

Think of the mown areas as bones and the rough grass as flesh. Mow a clear ring around every trunk — a metre out from the base is generous, sixty to ninety centimetres is the practical minimum — and mow the routes you actually use: to the gate, along the rows, out to the picking crates, around the bench. Everything else can stay long.

• Keep the ring clear all year, and especially from late autumn to early spring, when field voles will happily strip bark under cover of long, wet grass.
• Mow the same lines repeatedly. Repeated passes on the same route create firm, level paths and confine compaction to a small area rather than treating the whole orchard to wheel traffic.
• Set the blades high. Around 50–75mm is a sensible summer height for an orchard path, and higher still in a dry spell.

Aim for a path you can walk in ordinary shoes after rain. If you are sinking, so is the soil structure.

Leaving rough grass to work for wildlife

The long grass between the rows earns its place. Left uncut through spring and early summer it feeds moth caterpillars, shelters beetles and small mammals, and gives the orchard that unmistakable hum of a warm June afternoon. In older orchards it also supports waxcap fungi and the mosses and lichens that cling to ageing bark.

The trick is the timing of the cut. A single main cut in late July or August, once the wildflowers have set and dropped their seed, mimics the old hay meadow regime. Rake up the arisings and take them away — this is the part people skip. Removing the cut material takes nutrients out of the system year on year, which is exactly what you want if you are encouraging a finer, flower-rich sward rather than rank, nitrogen-hungry tussocks. Leave the cuttings lying and you simply feed the grass. On a small orchard, cut half the rough area one year and the other half the next, so invertebrates always have somewhere to retreat to.

Shallow roots: where damage really happens

Fruit trees are not deep-rooted in the way forest trees are. Most of the feeding roots of an apple tree sit in the top 30–45cm of soil, and a great many in the top 20cm, spreading well beyond the spread of the branches. That has two consequences for anyone managing grass.

• Competition for water and nutrients is real. Long, thick grass around a young tree will hold it back. Keep the trunk ring mown or, better still, mulched with well-rotted compost or bark, which feeds the soil and removes the need to get a mower close.
• Compaction is cumulative. Heavy machinery on wet ground squeezes the air out of those shallow horizons, and the tree pays for it the following summer. Keep vehicles on the established paths, avoid driving under the canopy, and stay off the ground entirely when it is waterlogged or frozen.

Above ground, the classic killer is the strimmer. One contact with the bark of a young tree can strip the cambium down to the wood, and such wounds rarely heal cleanly — they are also an open door for canker. Fit guards, or abandon the strimmer near trunks altogether and rely on a mulch ring instead.

A simple cutting calendar for the year

• Late winter: mow paths and trunk rings only when the ground is dry enough to carry the mower. Clear windfalls and dead wood.
• Spring (March–May): continue path mowing, but leave the rough grass to flower and avoid cutting long areas while birds are nesting.
• Early summer: keep paths tidy, check ties and guards. If grass is smothering a young tree, mow it — the trees come first.
• Late summer (late July–August): the main hay cut. Cut, leave to dry a few days, then rake and remove. Check for wasp nests and slow-worms first.
• Autumn: a final path cut, clear fallen leaves from around trunks where scab or brown rot has been a problem, and make sure each ring is clear before winter.

Making it work on your ground

Every orchard has its own character. A small garden orchard of three trees needs nothing more than a mulched ring and a push mower; a two-acre traditional orchard on heavy clay may need a contractor with a flail and the patience to wait for the right week. Walk the ground in February and decide where the paths should run, then be consistent. An orchard mown the same way each year develops a clean, green framework of paths and a rich, flower-filled middle — and the trees grow into it rather than fighting it.