The Art of Espalier, Arbors & Trellis’s –
Growing fruit vertically!
Growing fruit on attractive supports not only helps the plants thrive and bear abundantly but creates an all season interest in your landscape. Espaliered plants are prized for their beautiful vertical accents and for their ability to add ornamental beauty to both compact and sweeping spaces. Arbors frame an otherwise flat vista, beckon with a cool place to sit and hang with enticing fruit. Well designed trellis’s hold up the fruiting canes of raspberries, blackberries, grapes and hardy kiwi.
What and how you create your edible architecture makes all the difference in its function, beauty and longevity. Ecologia only designs with black locust wood renown for it long term rot resistance due to its natural anti-fungal properties. Less commonly available but just as resistant is Osage orange. Once you have the right wood setting your posts is next in importance. Using concrete is a weak choice that also wicks in moisture to the wood. We recommend and install all of our posts 24″-30″ inches deep, placed on a flat base stone and alternate packing in place with stone and subsoil. Next is assuring your edible structure is well braced. On trellis’s and espalier’s this is in the form of a ‘dead man’ which acts as an anchor to the posts which over time will want to pull in with plant and fruit weight (see image below of hardy kiwi trellis), on arbors and garden fences corner braces ‘rack’ the structure in place. See our gallery below to gain understanding of strong, well built edible architectures.
Ecologia offers many design options for growing fruit creatively and artistically regardless of your garden size. Using locally and ecologically harvested black locust we construct free standing fruit fences, arbors and trellis’s. From fan shaped currants and multi grafted espalier fruit fences to grape dripping arbors. Edible Architecture at its best.
Posted In: Edible and Ecological Landscape Design