Espalier Fruit Trees
Growing Fruit Trees in a Small Garden
I don’t have a lot of space in my garden. With the playhouses, climbing frame and summer house, there isn’t much room to grow large plants. However, I love having fruit trees in the garden. Not only do you get the amazing blossom in the spring, perfect for the local pollinators to feed on, but you also get all the fruit my family can enjoy in the autumn. So my only solution was to grow them using the espalier method, a technique I have quite a bit of experience with.
Originally developed as a way to grow tender fruits in walled gardens, gardeners used to train trees along south-facing walls using this technique so that they would be protected from harsh frosts in northern climates. Yet this espalier method is also a great way to grow trees in a small area. Based on a single central leader, horizontal tiers are trained at regular intervals out from it. This then creates a very flat but dense structure. The distance of each tier is based on what fruit you are growing, but it should be enough to allow as much light as possible around the branches to encourage optimal flower production.
So in the early spring of 2021, I took a trip to Brogdale Nursery in Faversham Kent, home to an outstanding collection of rare heritage fruit tree varieties. I’m a big fan of trying to keep going rare varieties of fruit trees that are dying out due to commercial fashions, so I bought two apple trees and a pear. The apples were ‘Suntan’ (originally raised here in Kent in 1956) and ‘Rosemary Russet’ (originally raised in England in 1831), and the pear was ‘Clapps Favourite Pear’ (originally raised in Massachusetts USA in 1860). The great advantage of going to a nursery that are expert growers was that the trees had already been raised early on to be grown espalier, with correct formative pruning already been done. All I had to do was plant them and let them establish.
Their first season I didn’t do much. It was all about letting their root systems establish in my soil. However, I did attach wire supports across my fence, at the heights that I wanted each tier to be. This wire was what I would then attach my branches to in the years to come.
Training Your Tree
Once established, you need to train your tree each autumn. This is when you assess the branches that you want to keep, tie them to the wire supports, and so create your horizontal tiers. It is important to do this in autumn and before it gets too cold. You need the sap to still be flowing along the branches, so that you can bend them without the risk of snapping. It’s also easier to do this when some of the leaves have dropped and you can see the natural frame of the tree.
As the tree grows up and you want to form your next tier, you can tie in your leader and another branch at the correct height. A new leader stem will form at the curve of the branch, continue to grow straight up next year, and in turn create the next tier.
For a more detailed look at how to train espalier trees, please check out the video made of me doing it here.
Pruning Your Trees
Like all fruit trees, pruning of espalier trees happens in the dead of winter, whilst the plant is fully dormant and no sap is flowing. Out of habit I prune mine in between Christmas and new year, a tradition I picked up from the head gardener at Buckingham Palace.
The way you prune an espalier tree is pretty much the same way as any other apple or pear tree. The only difference is you prune back all side growth along the main branches of the tiers, pruning back to the thick flowering buds. It is very important that you give enough space between the side branches to allow fruit to grow freely.
For a more detailed look at how to prune espalier trees, please check out the video made of me doing it here.
It takes a lot of patience to grow fruit trees using this technique. You have to be prepared to wait years whilst for each tier grows and gets trained, and wait many years before it starts producing a lot of fruit. After 3 years of growing them, I’m just about getting a decent amount of crop off them. But either way you have to agree, it’s a great way to bring the fantastic benefits of having fruit trees in small gardens.
