Adding fruit trees to your landscape opens up new gardening possibilities. But to set your fruit tree garden up for success, you need to have a solid plan. Urban orchardist Susan Poizner returns to the podcast this week to explain the planning process, step-by-step, and the pitfalls to avoid.
Susan is an ISA-certified arborist, an award-winning fruit tree care educator and the host of the “Orchard People” podcast. Through her books, online courses, YouTube channel, and international speaking engagements, Susan helps home growers learn the science and art of growing healthy, productive fruit trees naturally. Her new book, “Designing a Fruit Tree Garden: How to Choose Fruit Trees That Thrive in Your Climate and Space,” delivers on its promise to help you pick out the trees that are best suited to your garden and personal goals.
Susan in front of a standard cider tree RHS High Branching.
Photo Credit: OrchardPeople.com
”My goal is to make this friendly and fun,” Susan says. “It’s so easy to get freaked out by all the steps you need to do, but I guess it’s like anything else: If you’re learning to paint a picture, you’re going to paint a lot of pictures before you get just the right picture. And so with this book, I’m helping you maybe get the picture right, right from the start.”
She says she hopes her book not only helps people but also inspires them. “I hope it keeps the sense of fun that I really wanted to put in there because fruit trees are amazing, and I love them, and they’re so generous, and all they need is just a little bit of care from the people who love them and plant them, and then they’ll give us so much.”
‘Designing a Fruit Tree Garden’
The last 15 years or so of Susan’s life have prepared her to write her latest book. First, she educated herself about fruit tree care, making mistakes and figuring it out. Then she spent a lot of time building online courses and also taught at Niagara College in Ontario.
“I just went into depth about fruit trees and fruit tree care,” she recalls. “At this point in my life, I decided to close the e-learning. It was a lot.”
She runs a one-person show and grew tired of managing a business.
“I’m more the creative type,” she says. “I love teaching and I love educating. So my goal was to take everything that I got in those courses and to put them in books so that the information is there at an affordable price point that anybody can buy. I did briefly cover this topic in a couple of my other books, but I wanted to go into depth because I had a course on designing a fruit tree garden, where I go into all the nitty-gritty about rootstocks and different design choices and fruiting walls and all that beautiful stuff.”
The book transports readers to different locations while learning how to create the perfect garden in their own backyard.
“ What will thrive in my garden in Toronto won’t thrive in your garden,” she says. “And so I wanted to write something that works for everybody because when I started, the books were from California that I took out of the library.”
She had no idea that the cultivars the book recommended would not work in her climate. She learned that establishing a fruit tree garden is about more than where the fruit trees will go and where to add a water feature.
“ It’s about getting the trees right,” she explains.
You need to know how you’re going to grow them: Free-standing? A fruiting wall? Espalier?
“ Once you have that information, you can choose the right tree for your own backyard.”
Her book shares names of fruit tree nurseries across North America, the United Kingdom and Ireland so readers can find the appropriate trees for their hardiness zone and specific location.
Fruit Trees in Norway.
Photo Credit: OrchardPeople.com
Identify Your Garden’s Variables
Susan says when she started learning about fruit tree gardens, she felt like there was too much to learn and she would never get it right. But then she realized there are only a few variables.
Fruit trees, for the most part, need full sun. They also need well-drained soil.
“So one of the instructions in the book is to go into your backyard, find your full sun site,” she says.
And that means lots of hours of full sun, not just a short window of unfiltered sun each day.
Then dig a hole and test the drainage. A guest on her podcast described compressed soil like this: ”If you don’t like digging it, your tree isn’t gonna like living in it.”
If you can dig a foot deep easily, the soil is promising. If there are worms in it, even better. But then pour a bucket of water in it. If the water drains, great. If the water sits in the hole for two days, the fruit tree won’t like growing there.
“Fruit trees don’t like wet feet,” Susan points out.
Once you have the site, it’s time to determine which trees will like that site. There are plenty of choices for that because over the years, the nursery growers have done a great job hybridizing and creating cultivars that really work based on our specific desires. We can pick out trees that will grow small, medium or large — even extra small if that’s desirable. And we need to know if the trees we are considering require another tree to go with them so they can cross-pollinate in order to fruit.
Susan says it feels like a puzzle, which is why it helps to work it out step-by-step.
“If I go through logically and say, ‘Okay, here’s my site. I’ve got good soil. I’ve got full sun. I’ve got access to irrigation, so I can water it. Great. Now let’s see what kinds of trees I want to grow, what kind of fruit I want — and then we will slowly, step-by-step, go through the puzzle until at the end, voila, you’ve got your perfect tree. So it takes all the fear and stress away.”
Where to Get a Tree
If you go to a big box store, your selection is going to be very limited and the trees will be older, so you don’t even get a choice as to what size they’re going to be when they’re mature.
”Whatever they are, they are. They often don’t tell you what size these trees will be,” Susan says. “So you get this potted tree from the nursery. It looks like it may even have fruit on it because they want people to say, ‘ I don’t even have to wait for my harvest. This is so awesome.’”
But those fruits aren’t a sign that your tree will take off and be productive in its first year. Like all transplants, it needs time to get acclimated before it goes into growth mode.
“There are so many things that can and will go wrong with a more mature tree in a pot that’s probably root bound,” Susan says.
But on the other hand, you could go to a specialist fruit tree nursery where you’ve got so many choices, she says. You will be able to whittle it down and find the exact right tree for your backyard, for your zone, for your growing conditions. And on top of that, you’ll be able to customize it with a rootstock that determines what size the tree is going to be in the end.
Susan planting a fruit tree in an urban garden. Photo credit: OrchardPeople.com
Pick Trees That Fit Your Hardiness Zone
Susan says to start out by picking five trees that grab your attention.
“So then once you’ve picked your trees, I say, ‘Okay, now let’s look at what plant hardiness zone they’re appropriate for, and let’s see if it matches your backyard.”
Most people will say, “Whoops. Actually, these trees aren’t for my plant hardiness zone.”
Maybe just two or three are not a good fit for your zone. Maybe it’s all five. Either way, swap out the bad fits for appropriate trees so you land back on having five trees on your list.
Pollination Partners
“We have to figure out will those trees even cross-pollinate and produce fruit,” Susan says. “Because sometimes if you have five individual trees, and all of them demand an appropriate pollination partner, and none of them have pollination partners, then you have five gorgeous fruit trees that will never produce fruit.”
You could potentially have to double your number of trees to ensure each has a pollination partner, or you could substitute some trees for others to stay at five total.
“ If, for instance, in your list you had a peach tree, often they are self-pollinating. They’re quite independent, those peach trees,” Susan says. “They can pollinate themselves, and if you’ve got only room for one tree in your backyard, that might be a nice choice because it is self-pollinating. But those apple trees and the pear trees, they are fussy. They want a partner. They want a partner that is compatible with blossoms that open at the same time as their blossoms.”
Some plum cultivars, for instance, are self-pollinating while others require a partner.
For non-self-pollinators, a partner can’t simply be a second of the same cultivar. That’s because trees of the same cultivar are all clones of the same original tree. They are identical, and moving pollen from one to the next will accomplish nothing. A partner tree must be of a different cultivar and it must bloom at the same time as the tree it is paired with.
Photo Credit: OrchardPeople.com
Easy-to-Grow Trees
“ There’s a wide selection in the fruit tree nurseries,” Susan points out.
You may have your heart set on a beloved apple tree such as Honeycrisp — but Honeycrisp trees are quite hard to grow. In fact, that’s why Honeycrisp apples are so expensive. They also take a long time to produce fruit, and the fruit doesn’t always store well.
“ So when you are poring through the catalog, the fruit tree nursery catalog, or even looking at your short list of five trees, look at each description and ask yourself, ‘Are any of these trees disease-resistant?’” Susan says. “Because one of the biggest problems that we have with fruit trees is there are super common diseases that a lot of fruit trees get or rust. And then there’s other diseases with other trees. But over the years, in a natural way — this is not genetic engineering — breeders have developed disease-resistant fruit trees. So apples get a lot of diseases, but for instance, there’s some cultivars that we can grow here called Liberty, Freedom, and my favorite is Pristine.”
Liberty, Freedom and Pristine are all disease-resistant.
“ But when it says disease-resistant, you have to check which diseases. Because if you’ve got fire blight and it’s resistant to apple scab, you’re still going to get fire blight,” Susan says. “It’s disease resistant, but only to whichever diseases.”
If you are choosing just five trees, make sure two or three are disease resistant, she advises.
Frank P Matthews tree nursery in Worcestershire. Photo Credit: OrchardPeople.com
Rootstock Determines Size
If you want a patio tree, make sure you know what you are getting before you buy a tree. It could very well be a 25-footer when it grows.
“If you go to the garden center or a big box store, you just get a tree in a pot,” Susan points out. “They usually don’t even tell you what type of rootstock it is on.
“So fruit trees are made up of two trees. They’re like Franken-trees. The top part is the part that produces fruit. And then just above the root system … there is another tree that’s grafted on that provides the roots for the tree.”
It’s the rootstock that determines how big a tree will ultimately grow to be. Apple trees have many size options when it comes to rootstock, from dwarf trees that grow no more than 7 or 9 feet, to semi-dwarf, which grow 12-15 feet tall, to standard trees, which can reach 40 feet tall.
“ If you are at the garden center, you have no idea which one you’ve got. If you are ordering your tree from a specialist fruit tree nursery, you’re ordering it in advance, and you get to tell them,” Susan says.
You get to customize your tree and know that it will be suited to your hardiness zone.
Susan adds that a bareroot tree from a fruit tree nursery, while smaller than a potted tree from a garden center, will catch up fast and then surpass the potted tree.
“Those bare root trees adapt so much better to the new environment,” she says.
When planting a fruit tree, always ensure the graft is above the soil level. Otherwise, the stem may grow its own roots, bypassing the benefits of the rootstock.
Chill Hours
Chill hours are the number of cold hours, just around freezing temperature, a tree experiences over the winter.
Fruit trees that grow in temperate climates don’t just tolerate winter, Susan says. “They need winter in order for their blossoms to come out properly.”
At the end of the growing season, a fruit tree goes dormant, and it should stay that way until spring.
“Somebody inside the tree, let’s call it a hormone, needs to make sure that if there’s a warm day, that the blossoms don’t open up. Because if there’s one warm day in the winter and the blossoms open up, they will freeze and die, and then, whoops, blossoms are gone for the rest of the season and you get no fruit. Somehow, the tree knows it wants to reproduce. It wants to keep those buds closed over the winter. So there is a hormone called abscisic acid, and it’s like this babysitter sitting there and saying, ‘Kids, nobody is getting out of bed. You buds, you are staying put.’”
Every cultivar has a certain number of chill hours that it needs.
“Once it gets enough, the babysitter is like, ‘Okay, you guys, I’ll leave you alone now. I’m going to disappear until next year.’”
Then some other hormones encourage the buds to open up.
“If it’s too cold, you don’t get your chill hours, by the way,” Susan says. “If it’s too warm, you don’t get your chill hours. You need it right in that zone in order for the abscisic acid to go away and say, ‘Okay, guys, you’re good.’
“If you’re living somewhere warm and you only have 200 chill hours and you buy your Honeycrisp apple tree and you plant it in your backyard, and it needs 1,000 chill hours, it’s not a good scene because it doesn’t get enough time.”
The number of chill hours where you live is information you can get from your extension service.
If your climate does not have adequate chill hours for what you want to grow, you’ll need to pick a different cultivar.
Photo Credit: OrchardPeople.com
Biodiversity Supports Fruit Trees
Susan says one of her biggest lessons early on was that biodiversity supports healthier, more resilient fruit trees. She said that even though she was a gardener and loved flowers, little did she know that perennials in the park where her community orchard is located “would save us many, many times.”
Having a diversity of fruit trees rather than a monoculture also makes a difference.
Pests are attracted to a certain species of tree — they aren’t attracted to all the trees, Susan notes. “So if you have a variety of different species in your garden — you’ve got some peaches, you’ve got some apples, you’ve got some berries — then it confuses the insects.”
The insect pests might fly right by, or it might hit one tree while your other trees don’t suffer and you can still enjoy some harvest.
“ If you include berries, and flowers, and blossoms, and native plants, you will be attracting the pollinators and making sure that they are there in your orchard all through the seasons if possible,” Susan says.
Rather than using flowers that only bloom in spring, use various flowers with different blooming times so the pollinators will always have something to attract them to your garden. And then when the trees are ready to be pollinated, the pollinators will already be there.
Having a variety of flowers also brings in beneficial insects that eat insect pests.
“ My perfect example of that was a few years ago when we had a crazy aphid infestation in our city. Everywhere, the cherry trees looked like heck,” Susan says.
A couple days later, she discovered lady beetles in various stages of development all over her trees, eating the aphids.
“ The reason we have them is because we have a big, beautiful pollinator garden filled with native plants that are blossoming throughout the season. So we have lots of beneficial insects.”
Other trees in Toronto in areas that did not have that type of biodiversity did not recover until the following year.
“That really helped me to understand biodiversity is the way to go,” Susan says. “Monoculture just doesn’t work.”
I know that when I got around to planting dedicated flower beds in my food garden, it was a night-and-day difference.
A semi-dwarf apple tree in midseason. It’s easy to fall in love with trees because they are with you for years, unlike annual vegetables.
Fruit Tree Garden Layouts
Susan’s fruit tree garden design book isn’t about where to put a waterfall or shed.
“It’s really about, do you want your trees to be freestanding trees, like the old-fashioned way? Or do you want them to be a fruiting wall? Or do you want them to be espalier? Do you want an old-fashioned cider orchard? There are different layouts, and in the book I describe the different layouts. Now, why am I making you think about this before you buy your trees? Because the tree you buy needs to relate. You need to acknowledge what your design is going to be before.”
If you haven’t listened to my conversation with Susan Poizner on fruit tree gardens, you can do so now by clicking the Play button on the green bar near the top of this post.
Have you added fruit trees to your garden? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Episode 096: Tips for Fruit Growing Success: Selection, Maintenance & Advice, with Dr. Lee Reich
Episode 138: Why Pruning Matters: Principles, Recommendations and Tips from the Pruner’s Bible
Episode 215: Roots Demystified: The Amazing Unseen Things Roots Do
Episode 246: Growing Figs Anywhere, Even in Cold Climates, with Lee Reich
Episode 344: Grow Fruit Trees Successfully
Episode 415: Fruit Tree Pruning: How to Cultivate Healthy Fruit Trees
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“Orchard People” podcast
Urban Forestry Radio on Apple Podcasts
“Designing a Fruit Tree Garden: How to Choose Fruit Trees That Thrive in Your Climate and Space” by Susan Poizner
“Grow Fruit Trees Fast: A Beginner’s Guide to a Healthy Harvest in Record Time” by Susan Poizner
“Growing Urban Orchards: How to Care for Fruit Trees in the City and Beyond” by Susan Poizner
“Fruit Tree Pruning: The Science and Art of Cultivating Healthy Fruit Trees” by Susan Poizner
“Fruit Tree Grafting for Everyone: A DIY Guide to Creating Your Own Fruit Trees” by Susan Poizner
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