About five years ago, perhaps a little longer, I planted a pear tree in the garden.

Last summer it was full of pears. This summer, it is again.

Every time I open the door, there it is. Fruit tucked amongst the leaves, hanging in little clusters and slowly growing heavier on the branches. I pass it countless times a day, but lately I keep stopping to look at it.

I love it.

There is something incredibly satisfying about watching food grow just outside the door, particularly from something I planted years ago and have since mostly left to the business of being a tree.

And this summer it has made me want to know it better.

Not simply what on earth I am going to do with the harvest, although that question is becoming increasingly urgent, but where pears came from, how long we have grown them, what people once believed about them, and what might be happening in my own garden that I haven’t really noticed before.

Because the more I looked, the less ordinary it became.

The bees know

My garden isn’t particularly organised.

There is lavender, thyme and other herbs growing here and there, some where I intended them to be and others where they have apparently decided to live. At this time of year, there are bees everywhere.

I’ve always loved having them around, but I’ve never given an enormous amount of thought to where they go after leaving the lavender.

It turns out they may have something to do with the ridiculous number of pears I have.

Most varieties produce their best crops when their flowers receive pollen from another compatible pear flowering at around the same time. That other one doesn’t necessarily need to be in the same garden. Bees can carry the pollen between them.

Which reminded me of something a neighbour told me a couple of years ago.

Her fruit tree had apparently done very little until I planted mine, and then it began producing fruit.

The trouble is, I can’t now remember what kind she said it was.

If it was a pear, perhaps the bees have been travelling between the two all along. If it wasn’t, then somewhere else nearby there must be another one I’ve never noticed.

Either way, I now want to know.

Perhaps it belongs to someone a few doors away. Perhaps I’ve walked past it hundreds of times without giving it a second glance.

The bees, presumably, know exactly where it is.

I rather love the idea that while we divide the world into gardens, fences and little patches of land that belong to us, they simply fly over all of it.

A very old fruit

We have been eating pears for an extraordinarily long time.

There is evidence of people eating wild pears since prehistoric times, and by the Roman period they were being deliberately cultivated in numerous varieties. Pear growing became established in Britain too, and by 1086 they were familiar enough to appear in the Domesday Book as boundary markers.

I keep thinking about that.

Imagine one marking where a person’s land ended and another’s began almost a thousand years ago. Seasons passing around it. Blossom arriving, fruit ripening, people coming and going, while it remained part of the landscape.

Over the centuries, we cultivated an extraordinary number of varieties, many with names far more interesting than the handful most of us see in shops today.

Hendre Huffcap.

Butt.

Stinking Bishop.

Some have almost disappeared completely.

The old perry pear known as Coppy was once thought extinct until a single survivor was found. Grafts were taken from it so the variety could continue. Another called Flakey Bark now exists in only a handful of known places.

An entire flavour can come down to a few old specimens standing in a field.

Lose them and we don’t simply lose fruit.

We lose something people kept alive for generations.

When people sang to trees

This might be my favourite discovery.

For centuries, people in Britain have gathered in orchards during the dark part of the year and sung to their fruit trees.

Wassailing traditionally took place around Twelfth Night. People would gather amongst the trees, sing and make an enormous amount of noise, sometimes banging pots and pans to frighten away troublesome spirits and encourage a good harvest in the year ahead.

In some versions of the tradition, drink was poured around the roots and pieces of toast were placed amongst the branches. The custom survives today in parts of Britain where apple and pear orchards are still grown.

Even the word wassail comes from the Old English wæs hæl, a wish for good health.

We now talk about fruit trees in terms of pollination, rootstocks, pruning and yields.

All useful things.

But once, alongside the practical knowledge of tending an orchard, there was room for ceremony too.

People thanked the trees. Blessed them. Sang to them. Made a ridiculous amount of noise beneath their branches and hoped they would wake in spring and feed everyone again.

Science can tell me something rather wonderful about what is happening outside my door: somewhere, a bee carried pollen from one flower to another and helped create what I can see ripening now.

Folklore gives me something different.

A reminder that humans have always wanted to participate in the mystery of things growing.

Perhaps we simply used different language for it.

And now I have to eat them

Which brings me back to my garden.

After prehistoric pears, medieval boundary markers, forgotten varieties, travelling bees and people singing to orchards in the middle of winter, I am left with the considerably more practical problem I started with:

What am I going to do with all these pears?

I’m still deciding.

But I think at least some of them deserve something better than being forgotten in the fruit bowl.

So when they are ready, I think I’ll begin here.

Honey & Rosemary Baked Pears

Warm baked pears with honey and rosemary, served with thick yoghurt or crème fraîche. Simple, seasonal and perfect for using pears straight from the tree.

Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 40 min
Serves: 4

Equipment: Baking dish, small spoon, knife

Ingredients

4 ripe but firm pears
2 tbsp honey
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1 tbsp melted butter
½ tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp chopped walnuts or hazelnuts, optional

To serve

Thick yoghurt or crème fraîche

Preparation

Step 1

Heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan).

Step 2

Halve the pears lengthways and scoop out the cores. Arrange them cut-side up in a baking dish.

Step 3

Drizzle with the honey and melted butter. Sprinkle with cinnamon and tuck the rosemary around the pears.

Step 4

Bake for 25–35 minutes, until the pears are tender and beginning to caramelise at the edges.

Step 5

Spoon the warm juices from the dish over the pears. Scatter with chopped walnuts or hazelnuts, if using, and serve warm with thick yoghurt or crème fraîche.

Mine aren’t quite ready yet.

For now, they’re still outside the door, becoming a little heavier each day.

But after disappearing down this particular rabbit hole, I don’t think I’ll look at my little pear tree in quite the same way again.

Although when winter comes, I can’t promise I’ll be outside banging pots and pans beneath it.

Then again, perhaps I will.

Maybe I’ll even save it a piece of toast.