Proposal talk:Meadow orchard compromise

LandUSE

The tag is for the primary USE of the land ... if it is primarily for nature conservation .. then it should be tagged that way - not as an orchard nor meadow. Warin61 (talk) 21:49, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

"Primarily for nature conservation" may or may not be the case. I personally know at least two: #1 has just "always been there" behind the pastor's house, probably belongs to the church as an institution. #2 is a section of a former meadow that was turned into a residential zone. This section has a little stream going through it, so they could not build houses there. Turning it into a proper park was either too expensive or deemed inappropriate for a little village like this, so they planted some trees and called it a romantic Streuobstwiese. Thing is: you probably won't see any difference between either of these two or one that is still there because of actual conservation efforts. I don't think that'S something we could map. --El Grafo (talk) 08:12, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Orchard vs meadow

The tag landuse=orchard does not distinguish between the method of tree planting nor what exists between the trees. The tag landuse=meadow implies that there are no trees so, to me, is less suitable. Warin61 (talk) 21:49, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Fruit production

Apple Farmer here. In my understanding an orchard is a pice of land dedicated to fruit production. Up to about 100 years ago all Apple, Pear and Cherry production was happening on full size trees ("Hochstamm"). These trees where located in orchards. In our Area we can trace back this with the namen Obsthof, Baumgarten, Bongert, Bungert etc for at least 500 years.

About 100 in the most productive regions the main mode of production shifted to more bit smaller trees per hectare. So usually the big trees where cut down and smaller trees - about 3 meters - where planted. For some time the grass between trees where removed. Other times grass was considered more productive. https://obstbau-museum-rheinland.de/museum.php gives a nice overview about this development.

In less productive areas there was no capital for this change. So the old, big trees stayed, where of less and less commercial interest, trees died and we now are at the point of "a few old trees per hectare on grass" - People associate this today often with "Streuobst".

In the 90ies we found out that these landscapes had a very high species diversity - some counts say about 5000 different species per hectare. So o e was planting fruit trees mainly for nature conservation purposes. Today it's generally accepted, that this was a dead end.

For fruit trees to grow old and provide lots of micro habitats with thee hollows etc they need constant care. And it seems the best way to ensure that is that somebody wants the fruit.

There is a lot of discussion in nature conservation cycles on how to structure that but generally it is nowadays accepted that new projects have to be structured in a some way around fruit production.

So for me the distinction "low trees=orchard" and "high trees=meadow" seems very artificial.

While there are certainly some meadows with a few very old fruit trees newly planted ones with about 8-12 m between trees planted in a grid patterns certainly have the character of an orchard for me.Mdornseif (talk) 07:56, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Possible to add tags produce=* to indicate the orchard crop and for tree heights est_height=* or height:range=*. Warin61 (talk) 07:15, 4 August 2025 (UTC)