Espalier

ChrisStopped into the co-op to get a picture of Chris Bezek and of course started chatting him up on some gardening ideas we've been tossing around: kid's turf/play area, children's gardens (2 years down the road), and our desire for a fruit tree. (This blog-post is wholly personalized to what we're trying to accomplish along these lines. However, it does give a nice example of what a conversation with Chris can yield for garden ideas.)

Pear TreeWell, 20 minutes later I had pretty much had my mind blown wide open. So, of course now I've obsessively been researching this Espalier concept (wikipedia) and backyard orchard culture.

"An "espalier," (pronounced "es-PAL-yer") is any plant trained to grow in a flat plane against a wall, fence, or trellis. The word espalier also may be used to describe the technique of training a plant to this flat plane. A French word, espalier is derived from the Italian spalliera, which means something to rest the shoulder (spalla) against."

This isn't our intent, we want to plop the fruit tree right in the middle of a garden spot we call the Patio Patch. It gets full sun and we want to continue
growing veggies and other sun loving plants there. So, we need to have a tree that's sparce and stays pretty much under 7 feet tall. This espaliering seems like the best way to achieve our wishes...

Espalier Example

Of course Chris also had some great thoughts on a turf play area that we'll need to implement next spring for our newborn so he can hang out with us while we're in the garden puttering about. We've got some more thinking to do about play areas and kid garden areas. We fully intend to have a specific garden area for our child that is his alone to build and maintain. We'll have to help out the first few years, but hopefully he'll be into it.