General information: around 350 taxons
Area: 5.55 ha
The collection of fruit trees and bushes is made up of three parts.
The first one, established in 1986-1989, presents fruit plants recommended for cultivation in home gardens and allotments (309 taxons in total). Fruit trees such as apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry and apricot trees as well as raspberry, blackberry, currant, gooseberry, hazel and chokeberry bushes are grown here. Out of the huge number of varieties, we selected those that are both most resistant to diseases and pests and have the tastiest fruit, such as the ‘Rajka’ and ‘Florina’ apple trees, the ‘Conference’ pear, the ‘Amers’ plum and the ‘Early Orange’ apricot. You can also see two varieties of Chinese pear and the red-fleshed ‘Blutroter’ pear as well as seven varieties of Japanese plum, including the almost black-skinned ‘Black Amber’ and the slightly red-fleshed ‘Santa Rosa’.
The collection of blueberries is noteworthy – it represents not only wild growing species, such as huckleberries and cowberries, but also large-fruited varieties of blueberries, such as the ‘Bluecrop’ and ‘Duke’, and large-fruited ‘Pilgrim’ cranberries. It is also home to lesser-known interesting species, such as mallow, dogwood (the fruit of the ‘Jantarnyj’ variety is yellow), quince, actinidia, mulberry, cherimoya, sea buckthorn, olive, hawthorn, chestnut or Chinese citron, with fruit suitable for consumption fresh or after drying or processing into preserves: juices, jams, or tinctures. These species have been known for a long time in folk medicine. A variety of strawberry that repeats fruiting and the yellow-fruiting strawberry are also worth recommending.
The second part of the collection (established in 1992-1993) consists of old, uncultivated or completely forgotten apple varieties that bear fruit alternately, i.e. every second year, and hence have been excluded from large-scale fruit growing by modern varieties. We have nearly 700 old varieties of apple trees in the exhibition collection and in the nursery, some – such as ‘Aporta’ and ‘Bursztówka Szlachetna’ – even dating back to the 12th century.
The third part of the collection consists of species from wild ancestors of orchard plants which bear edible fruit. A total of more than 200 species of apple, pear, plum, hawthorn, rowan, cherry, rose, currant and other species have been collected here, including crab apples with small ornamental fruits. The collection includes the beautiful South China apple tree, which flowers profusely in white.
This part of the collection also contains 98 specimens of the Asian Siewers apple tree, considered one of the main ancestors of the cultivated apple tree, whose seeds were collected from natural sites in the mountains of Kazakhstan.