Space-Saving Solutions For A Fruitful Garden

Think you’ve got no room to grow your own fruit? Then think again. Hazel Sillver has suggestions for incorporating fruiting trees and bushes into the smallest of spaces

- Hazel Sillver

It's bare-root planting season for fruit trees and bushes, but before you wistfully dismiss these plants as requiring more space than your garden can provide, you should know that you don’t need masses of room to produce a decent crop of fresh fruit. While it would be nice to have the luxury of ample acreage on which to plant your own orchard and generous fruit cages, it’s not essential. Bushes (like gooseberry) can be grown in borders; trees (pear and cherry, say) can be trained against walls; and dwarf fruit trees thrive in containers.

Between November and March, many fruiting bushes and trees are available to buy ‘bare root’. Sold at a lower price without compost around their roots, these will establish faster and better than plants grown in pots. They can go in the ground any time before early spring, but the earlier you plant, the more time the roots will have to settle and strengthen.

If you’re worried that growing fruit in the main garden will result in borders that look messy, don’t be: on the contrary, fruit can look beautiful. Trees such as apple produce snow of blossom in spring, and when trained against the wall they’ll create elegant shapes that frame the garden: the horizontal tiers of a pear ‘espalier’, for example. Equally attractive are ‘stepovers’, low fences of apple or pear trees used to edge borders or divide areas.

Beautiful bushes