Beautiful Space Saving Espalier
Save space and add seasonal interest to your landscape by espaliering fruit trees or ornamental plants flat against a wall, fence, or trellis. With regular pruning you can create living art that adds flowers and fruit to the landscape.
The cordon is the most traditional design and often used to create living fences. Branches are trained to grow horizontally out from one single trunk.
The branches of a palmetto espalier are shaped into a U by training the branches up at the ends.
Fill a vertical space by training branches up and outward at a 45-degree angle to form a fan.
Consider an informal design if you want to do a bit less pruning and have an informal landscape.
Create a candelabra with several vertical branches arising from a low horizontal branch.
A Belgian fence has several V-shaped espaliers woven together to form a fence or lattice.
A bit more information: Select young plants suited to the growing conditions. Those with flexible branches like pyracantha, camellia, magnolia and many fruit trees and whose mature height matches the space will be easier to manage. You will generally need about 8 feet of linear growing space to espalier one tree.
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