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Fruit Trees for Small Gardens
There's an excellent letter in the Western Morning News from the secretary of http://www.orchardslive.org.uk/ (the organisation that I think is mostly behind my lovely North Devon Mazzards! ) extolling the virtues of 'traditional' big apple trees with 10 foot stems in smaller gardens.
Admittedly, mine isn't a particularly small garden, but none the less I think she has it spot on. My garden would have a lot less room in it if I had pruned my trees to keep their height restricted, as is often advised. As it is, I can walk under the branches of most of the trees, and although I topped my cherry 'summer sun' last year, I now think this was something of a mistake - that tree only has a 5-foot stem, and it's too low, now the tree is maturing the branches are hanging down rather than reaching up, and you can't get past it. I think this winter I shall have to go the other way and lift the crown!
Fruit trees do not produce particularly dense shade, so you can still use the space underneath - and a bush tree that would entirely fill a small garden would be entirely manageable if the fruiting branches were up out of the way overhead. And you can still harvest a lot of apples just by application of a children's fishing net. Also, a bit of summer shade keeps the grass from growing quite so fast. And a good way of using lawn mowings is to dump them at the foot of a fruit tree, which will happily Slurp them up and use them to make more apples.
Admittedly, mine isn't a particularly small garden, but none the less I think she has it spot on. My garden would have a lot less room in it if I had pruned my trees to keep their height restricted, as is often advised. As it is, I can walk under the branches of most of the trees, and although I topped my cherry 'summer sun' last year, I now think this was something of a mistake - that tree only has a 5-foot stem, and it's too low, now the tree is maturing the branches are hanging down rather than reaching up, and you can't get past it. I think this winter I shall have to go the other way and lift the crown!
Fruit trees do not produce particularly dense shade, so you can still use the space underneath - and a bush tree that would entirely fill a small garden would be entirely manageable if the fruiting branches were up out of the way overhead. And you can still harvest a lot of apples just by application of a children's fishing net. Also, a bit of summer shade keeps the grass from growing quite so fast. And a good way of using lawn mowings is to dump them at the foot of a fruit tree, which will happily Slurp them up and use them to make more apples.