FRUIT TREES OVER WALKS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2116, 30 January 1886, Page 2

FRUIT TREES OVER WALKS.

A contributor to the Canterbury Press writes : — The following, from a London paper, will show that useful and yet beautiful effects can be obtained by bringing the orchard to the front. I may mention that at Professor Bickerton'a estate, at Avon Bend, a similar instance can be seen, where a tong Jiower of brambles, presenting a great surface of fruit bearing branchlets, forms a cool and shady promenade ; when the thinker or lover of solitude will be another season be as excluded from the world as in a distant forest ; — A few miles from where we are writing there is a farmhouse garden, from which many of us might learn a useful lesson in reference to hardy fruit culture. The garden in question is in front of the residence, which, we should mention, stands a good way back from the highway. The width of the garden is perhaps a little over 30 yards, and through this strip of ground runs a rather wide walk leading up to the house. It would appear that at one time, probably as many as twenty yeara ago, espalier fruit trees lined both sides of this walk ; they look, too, as if for a few years they had been tolerably well cared for, because the branches had evidently been trained to the horizontal direction for at least Bft or 10ft on each side of the stem ; then they seem to have been neglected and allowed to grow as they liked. They now, therefore, form a hedge* like growth on each side of the walk, and in a few years the branches will meet together overhead and form a> bower 10ft in height. A good amount of bearing surface is thus presented, sufficient, indeed, for each tree to furnish from six to eight bushels of apple*. Than this bower when in full blossom nothing could be more .striking ; the trees have had just enough of their own way to possess a sort of freedom ; there is an absence of all stiffness, and yet a combination of the ornamental and usefnl that is quite charming. The lesson to be drawn from this is that where space is limited and a certain number of walks indispensable, it is quite practicable to plant fruit trees by the sides of them, and, in-.te.id of allowing them to grow out over the cultivated ground, to compel them to grow over the walks. This must not, however, be understood as advocating stiffly trained bowers, requiring a lot of labour and yet only giving poor results ; but it is quite possible with a little judicious pruning to grow apples, pears and plums in any direction,