Developed by ancient Romans, mastered by the French, espaliers (Espa, Lee, Yay) are a great solution for small-space gardens with walls and fences. This form of pruning is usually done with fruit trees and small ornamental trees like magnolias, cotoneaster, vibunums and crabapples.

I call mine my flat orchard - two dwarf pear and two dwarf apple trees in a diamond pattern.

I measured off the diamond pattern on the garage wall, drilled holes at the top and bottom, then screwed in heavy-duty large eye screws. I threaded thin cables through them and made sure everything was taut.

The trees are spaced roughly four feet apart along my garage wall, but any wall, fence or even an area between two strong posts would do. They’re about 8” from the wall. Had to add a lot of compost. It was very clay-y here.

After the trees were planted, I waited till they were happy and growing leaves vigorously then started tying them to the wires with pliable plastic garden “tape”. And pruning. You have to be pretty mercenary about cutting off the new branches that want to go where you don’t want them.

It’s not too much work keeping up with the trimming. Mine happens to be on the deck and are short (no ladders required) and I keep the seceters out so I trim while I’m grilling or hanging out on the deck. It’s actually more filled-in than the top photo to the right. That’s from year one. I don’t have a good recent photo, it’s four years old now. I’ll update, once spring hits.

For trimming, I’ve found that to make good-looking diamond shapes, I trim the negative space to look like diamonds, rather than trimming the branches to look like lines, if that makes any sense.

They don’t have to be a diamond shape. Espaliers are horizontal or fan-, pitchfork- or lyre-shaped and even freeform. And they can be any height. Monet’s are knee-high. Mine go to about 7 feet. Another garden here in Buffalo has a  free-form apple espalier that is easily 15 feet tall. But they need a ladder to prune appropriately. If it were my garden, it would never get done.

I’ve not had any fruit from them yet. They only blossomed the first year, and I haven’t seen blossoms the last two. Not sure what I’m doing wrong there. But I didn’t plant them for the fruit. I planted them so I could could have a garden feature that rhymed with my last name. The Charlier espalier!

More Monet:

Monet Garden at Giverny

Monet’s Front Yard