The titular cherry orchard is the play’s most important symbol. As it means different things to different characters, it symbolizes Russia’s complex past and the characters’ sometimes contradictory attitudes toward leaving that past behind. 

The orchard is large, beautiful, and unproductive. It is a relic of a time when land ownership and wealth were concentrated within a small upper-class aristocracy. However, after emancipation, the country’s social makeup and economic structure are changing, and the orchard represents a beautiful but useless luxury that there is no longer room for in the country. As the middle class grows, land must be divided more equally and used more productively. Lopakhin understands this, which is why he suggests that Lubov can pay off her debts by chopping down the orchard and renting out the land to middle-class residents; Lubov, however, is shocked and offended by this suggestion.

To Lubov, the orchard symbolizes her supposedly idyllic childhood, and her obsession with its beauty represents her inability to see the past clearly. For Lopakhin, it is a symbol of his family’s oppression and forced labor as serfs. According to Trofimov, there is “something human look[ing] at you from every cherry in the orchard, every leaf and every stalk” (50), indicating that the orchard holds traumatic memories of serfdom.