6 in 1 apple tree, one tree SIX varieties of apples!

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Without a doubt, the plant in my garden that gets the most attention is my flat apple tree. It grows flat, across my front porch railing, because I have bullied it into position. This is called an espalier.

An 8 year old espaliered apple tree in bloom.

Years ago I started researching Espaliered fruit trees. They seemed mystical, magical and unattainable; probably the kind of thing that you could only expect to grow if you were British and had a stone wall surrounding your house.

Espalier apple trees are trained and pruned so they grow flat against a fence or wall. They get wider and thicker but they don't get taller. Kind of like women after the magical age of 40.

But wide and thick also makes us strong, stable and less easy to push over.

You can make your own espalier by grafting branches onto a stock trunk, but nurseries and even box stores are now carrying espaliered fruit trees. A lot of them, like mine, have different varieties of fruit on every branch.

A grafted apple espalier with 6 branches, each with a different variety of apple.

That means you get 6 different types of apples (or peaches or pears) from one tree, each branch bearing a different fruit.

All of these multi-variety trees come with a brass I'm an Apple Authority plate for your front door.

No they don't.

My trees each grow Gravenstein, Jonagold, McIntosh, Braeburn, Fuji and Royal Gala.

Table of Contents

Planting an Espalier Tree

The trick to keeping an espalier tree in shape is wiring the branches into place so they don't go all willy nilly on you.

It seems intimidating but it's as easy as apple pie.

Materials

6, lag eye bolts (5/16")
3, hook & eye turnbuckles (small)
6 aluminum sleeves (3/32")
Crimping tool or heavy mallet
30' of 12 gauge rope wire (this length gives you 3, 10' lengths)

NOTE: Rope wire is difficult to cut without a special tool. Either use a cold chisel and this ingenious method or use a pair of wire rope cutters.

Lag eye bolt, aluminum sleeves, turnbuckle on wood deck.

Instructions

Newly planted apple espalier trees on white front porch.

Planting

Dig a hole twice as wide and the same depth as your rootball.
Place tree in the hole, gently teasing roots out.
Fill hole with a mix that contains at least ½ compost.
Gently press the soil into place and add more if needed.
Water well. This is important. Don't skip it.

Lag eye bolts secured into porch post placed at even intervals.

Rope wire around the eye of a lag bolt, attached with a crimped aluminum sleeve.

Screw your eye bolts into a very secure surface like fence posts or a wall at the same level as each branch.

Wrap wire around one eye bolt and clamp on a sleeve. Repeat for all levels.

Turnbuckle attached to eye bolt on porch post

Young espaliered apple tree fixed to front porch with wire system.

Extend wires to the eye bolt on the opposite side. Unscrew the turnbuckle so it's as open as possible before attaching your wire. Hook your turnbuckle over the eye of the bolt. Slip your wire through the eye on the end of the turnbuckle and clamp a sleeve around the wires as in step 2.

Twist the turnbuckle until the wires is taut. Once the wires are tight, you can tie each branch onto it. Use a soft cloth, a plastic clamp or foam covered wire.

Young apple espalier against white porch.

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There may be errors. For me there were errors. I thought I was screwing into a solid portion of the post but as it turns out, I wasn't. So I had to perform a do-over and place my eye bolts a little further to the right where they were going into solid wood.

Turnbuckle Tips

One tip for a turnbuckle is to make sure you have it opened right up before you attach your wire. That way you'll have the most amount of space for tightening it.
If your wire stretches and becomes loose over the years, you can just twist the turnbuckle to tighten it.

If you don't have a crimping tool like this one to squish your sleeve together you can hammer it with a mallet.

The Mature Espalier

Even if the espalier you bought or grafted looks like no more than a few sticks in just a couple of years it will fill out and produce scads of apples.

Espalier apple tree with 6 grafted branches.

Years 1 & 7

Espalier apple tree on white porch with Canada pillow in background. — Year 1

8 year old apple espalier on front porch blossoming in spring. — Year 8

You can see the espalier hasn't grown any taller, but the trunk is sturdier and the branches extend all the way across the porch.

They look more compact and delicate when they're in bloom. The leaves aren't yet out so you can really see the structure of the tree.

Ready to harvest 7 year old apple espalier tree covered in apples. — Year 7

Once it leafs out and the apples start to grow your tree will be less architectural looking unless you keep it relentlessly pruned.

I'm working on pruning my fruiting branches back to give the tree a smaller, more structured shape. I only became confident in my pruning last year by consistently following these espalier pruning rules for apple trees.

Now that I feel like I know what I'm doing, I can shape the tree more and keep it neater.

Below is a photo from the full 2023 harvest from my 2 small trees.

Harvest from two small apple espaliers in wooden crates and wicker baskets.

And more recently the apple trees blossoming in their 8th year.

Blossoming of 8 year old apple espalier against white porch.

You can do this same thing on the side of a house or fence. In fact, you can make an entire fence of just espaliers by using T-posts hammered into the ground for running the wire along.

Now all you have to do is decide where to put it and what to do with all the apples.