FRUIT TREES FOR A SMALL GARDEN

November and the months until March are the perfect time to plant fruit trees. Now that the leaves are off the trees, and the ground is not too cold, roots can establish themselves without any burden of feeding the tree. And in northern latitudes fruit trees are all deciduous, they lose their leaves in the winter.
Why plant fruit trees? Apart from the fact that many are very beautiful they are also extremely useful and help us to make our personal contribution to reducing climate change. Fruit, or for that matter vegetables, grown on our own piece of land reduce CO2 emissions. Avoiding delivery from far flung orchards or distant countries means no use of oil and no greenhouse gases.
In my own small garden the fruit tree of most importance is my Bramley apple. This is large enough to sit under in the summer, provide wonderful blossom in spring and a large and reliable crop of cooking apples each autumn. All winter I can watch birds moving onto it and through it to find a seemingly inexhaustible supply of food. What more could anyone ask from a single tree?
The range of fruit trees suitable for a garden is enormous. Most types of fruit, be they apples, pears, cherries, plums, damsons or gages have been grafted onto rootstocks to control their heights. This is a process where the top of the tree, above the graft, is the variety you want for its fruit but the bottom, below the graft, has been chosen for its vigour. The same variety, a Bramley apple for instance, may be available on very dwarf, dwarf, semi dwarf, semi vigorous or vigorous rootstock allowing you to choose the one which suits your garden best. In addition there are trees trained in the nursery to give different shapes such as cordons, espaliers, fans, stepovers and ballerinas. Cordons, fans and espaliers are trained flat to give small trees useful as a hedge or trained on a wall. Stepovers are so low that you can literally edge a garden bed with them and ballerinas give tall thin trees. Whichever form you choose is likely to be available in a huge range of apples. The other fruit, pears etc., are also likely to be available in a considerable number of varieties. So how would you choose the type of fruit to suit you?
This of course is a very personal matter. To consider only apples, there are lots of factors, starting with taste. This is entirely a personal matter but such issues as time of fruiting, ease of growing (some varieties are far more fussy and may need lots of spraying to produce decent crops - anathema to the organic gardener), whether dessert or cooking or both, ease of storage and pollination group should be considered. Get these wrong and you may have plenty of years to regret your mistake.
The best place to start is with a gardening book and one or more catalogues. There are many reliable nurseries with free catalogues of fruit trees which have been developed from ancient times to the present. But before you start looking at them you would be well advised to think about which varieties taste best. Then the finished size of the tree and lastly the pollination group. Some trees are self pollinating but most will need another tree flowering at the same time if they are to produce fruit. Some indeed, such as my Bramley, need two other pollinators flowering at the same time and these would usually have to be within around 100metres of my tree for the bees to travel between them. In towns or near orchards this is rarely a problem but with more remote gardens you may have to plant more than one tree to get decent amounts of fruit. Again a good book and a decent catalogue will help you out here.
After you have planted your tree don't expect a crop for the first year. If it produces a small one you should probably remove it as soon as you see the fruit set and leave the tree to gather its strength during that first crucial year. Water it well in dry spells during the first couple of summers and get ready to wrestle with the joys of pruning. It is quite possible to get crops without pruning but better crops produced more frequently, ie yearly instead of every two years, are more likely if you learn the beginnings of the art.I would always recommend referring to the Royal Horticultural Society, www.rhs.org.uk, for books and information on the subject.
Fruit tree catalogues in the UK can be obtained from www.frankmatthews.com or www.kenmuir.co.uk. Googling will produce very many more fruit nursery addresses.

CHOOSING A SHADE TREE FOR A SMALL GARDEN

There are many trees suitable for providing shade. In my own garden a Bramley apple does the job very well but a Betula (Birch) would also do. A gently weeping Prunus (flowering Cherry) such as Shirotae - also known as Mount Fuji - would also be good but the roots are shallow and might be a problem if you are planting into a lawn. Sometimes the roots break the surface of the grass and make mowing more difficult. The amount of shade given by birch may be slightly less than for apple or cherry as the canopies of birch are lighter. This can be an advantage if you wish to plant into a lawn as it allows some growth of more shade-tolerant grasses.

All these trees are quite small and suitable for small gardens. The Bramley apple would need to be grown on a more vigorous rootstock so that you get the height and can walk underneath. You would need to make it clear when you buy one of these trees that you want one with enough clear stem to allow walking, or at least sitting, beneath it.

SHOULD I REMOVE THE IVY FROM A TREE IN MY GARDEN?

There has always been a lot of controversy about the effect of Ivy on trees and whether it is a good idea to remove it or not. In the end your decision may depend on what you want from your tree - a classic uncluttered shape or a wildlife habitat and a more natural, woodland appearance.

Ivy is a native, evergreen climber able to thrive in very low light levels such as often exist on the woodland floor or underneath the canopy of a tree. It uses a tree as a means of support, a way of climbing from the darkness at the ground to the relatively higher light levels at the top of trees. When it arrives there it changes form and starts to produce differently shaped leaves as well as flowers and seeds. In the process it does not generally harm a healthy tree but may contribute towards removing light from the leaves of an old or dying tree. In addition some trees with lighter canopies, such as Ash, which let more light through may support larger Ivy plants but these are not expected to shorten the life of the tree. They may however make it more top heavy and likely to fall in a storm or they may disguise damage to the trunk or branches of a tree making it more dangerous. In woodland situations this may not matter but in private gardens, in parks or on roadsides consideration may need to be given to this. In addition you may feel that a tree covered in ivy does not look as good as one without.

Before taking the decision to remove Ivy from your tree however please consider that it creates an excellent wildlife habitat. As well as providing cover and food for a huge range of invertebrates (insects, spiders etc) it can give excellent roosting places to birds and bats, overwintering niches for butterflies and moths and, of course, nesting places for a range of birds.

if you decide to remove your Ivy it is generally done by cutting the plants low down. They rely entirely on their roots in the ground for nutrition, they do not take any from the tree, and so cutting the stems will kill the plant above. It will go dry and brown with time and can more easily be removed from the support of the tree.

To sum up, the decision on whether to remove the ivy will depend on what you want from your tree. If you want it for its form rather than its value as a habitat you may decide to remove the Ivy. In a woodland setting the choice is usually easier as the form of a tree grown in the relative open space of a park or garden is rarely achieved and you can appreciate the tree for its role in the woodland ecosystem.