PrintFruit Trees & Shrubs
Fruit trees and shrubs are the ultimate landscape multitaskers. Beyond providing delicious, sun-ripened produce that exceeds store-bought quality, they serve as stunning landscape features: offering fragrant spring blossoms, cooling summer shade, and vibrant autumn color. Best of all, any fruit you don’t harvest provides valuable forage for birds and other wildlife.
If you lack the room for a sprawling canopy, consider dwarf varieties or ‘espaliered’ trees (trained flat against a fence or wall) to maximize real estate. Berry bushes such as raspberries, gooseberries and currants are also easy to incorporate into a small space.
Design tips:
- Some fruit trees and shrubs require cross-pollination– meaning they need a second, compatible tree of a different variety nearby in order to actually produce fruit (for example, a ‘Zestar’ apple would do well with a ‘Sweet Sixteen’ planted nearby). Other types are self-fertile, and can be planted alone. Your local nurseryperson, or a quick internet search, will help you pick the right varieties for your landscape.
- Most fruit-bearing plants need consistent water for overall health and tasty fruit.
- If you are worried about particular kinds of wildlife visiting your yard, like raccoons, there are several steps you can take to deter them:
- Harvest fruit as soon as it ripens and remove fallen, damaged, or overripe fruit immediately. Overripe and rotting fruit send out beacons to scent-savvy foragers (like raccoons and yellow jackets), and proactively removing it will greatly reduce the number of unwanted visitors in your yard.
- Locate fruit plantings away from structures that provide climbing access to trees, like fences, sheds, and other wooded vegetation.
- Prevent access to fruit by using netting or mesh cages around plants during the fruiting season.