Choosing the Best Apple Trees for Small Gardens

Start with the rootstock, not the fruit

When someone asks me which apple to plant in a small garden, I always ask about their space before their tastebuds. The single biggest factor in whether an apple tree stays manageable is its rootstock — the root system it is grafted onto. A 'Cox's Orange Pippin' on a vigorous rootstock will race to five metres and sulk at the back of a border; the same variety on a dwarfing rootstock will sit happily at two metres and crop generously in a large pot. Get this wrong and no amount of pruning will undo it. Get it right and you can grow four or five varieties in the space a single vigorous tree would swallow.

Which rootstock suits your plot?

Three rootstocks do most of the work in British small gardens, and it pays to know them before you fall for a variety name.

• M27 — the smallest, reaching roughly 1.2 to 1.8 metres. Ideal for pots, patios and stepovers. It needs permanent staking, fertile soil and no grass competition whatsoever.
• M9 — dwarfing, around 1.8 to 2.5 metres. The classic choice for cordons and modest espaliers. Crops early and heavily, and also wants a stake for life.
• M26 — semi-dwarfing, roughly 2.4 to 3 metres. A dependable all-rounder for a small lawn or an orchard corner, usually fine with staking for its first five to seven years.
• MM106 and M25 — best avoided unless you genuinely have a half-acre to fill. Lovely trees, wrong scale for a garden.

If you garden on heavy clay, exposed chalk or a windy hillside, choose the smallest rootstock you can and improve the ground generously. A dwarf tree in poor soil is a miserable, twiggy thing that never quite gets going.

Varieties that earn their keep

Disease resistance matters more in small gardens, because you cannot outrun a problem by moving the tree. In damp western Britain, scab and canker will find you; in the drier east, mildew and aphids are the usual nuisances. Choose varieties with some natural resistance and you will spend far less time spraying and more time picking.

• Discovery — early, bright red and juicy, with decent scab resistance. Perfect for a shorter season and impatient children.
• Egremont Russet — nutty and distinctive, tolerant of canker, and happy in cooler, wetter districts.
• Fiesta (Red Pippin) — heavy cropping, excellent flavour and good scab resistance. The most reliable Cox substitute for a small plot.
• Sunset — smaller, easier and more disease-tolerant than Cox, with much the same rich flavour.
• Lord Lambourne — heavy crops, good scab resistance, and partially tip-bearing, which suits a relaxed training style.
• Scrumptious or Red Falstaff — self-fertile, compact, crisp and sweet; invaluable where no pollinator grows nearby.
• Annie Elizabeth — a canker-resistant cooker that shrugs off northern weather, though it is a triploid and will not pollinate others.

Katy and Herefordshire Russet are also worth a look, both compact and reasonably resistant, and both cropping well when young.

Pollination, aspect and planning

Most apples are not self-fertile, so they need a partner of a different variety flowering at the same time. In a small garden you can often rely on a neighbour's tree within a hundred metres or so, but it is safer to plant two varieties from the same or adjacent flowering groups. Triploids — Bramley, Blenheim Orange, Ashmead's Kernel, Ribston Pippin — cannot pollinate anything at all, so they always need two partners. If space is truly tight, plant a self-fertile variety such as Scrumptious and stop worrying.

Site matters as much as variety. Apples want sun for at least six hours a day and shelter from prevailing wind, which snaps brittle branches and strips blossom. Avoid frost pockets at the bottom of a slope, because early blossom is easily killed and you will lose the crop before it starts. A south or west-facing wall is the finest spot in any garden, and it is where espaliers and fans genuinely thrive.

Training to fit the space you have

Once you have chosen a rootstock and a variety, the training form decides the footprint. Cordons spaced 60 to 75 centimetres apart, angled at 45 degrees, will give you half a dozen varieties along a fence. Espaliers need roughly 3.5 to 4.5 metres of wall each, with tiers 45 to 60 centimetres apart. Stepovers make a productive, knee-high edging along a path at 1.5 to 2 metres spacing. Patio trees in 35 to 45 litre pots, grown on M27 or M9, will crop well for years if you top-dress each spring and water diligently through dry spells.

Prune cordons and espaliers in late summer rather than winter, cutting new growth back to three or four leaves above the spur. This keeps the tree compact and reduces the risk of canker entering through winter wounds.

Planting and the first three years

Bare-root trees go in between November and March, and autumn planting gives roots a head start. Container-grown trees can be planted at almost any time, provided the ground is not frozen or bone dry. Dig a hole wider than it is deep, set the graft union a good 10 to 15 centimetres above soil level, backfill with the original soil plus a little well-rotted compost, and firm gently. Stake immediately — M27 and M9 will need that stake permanently — and mulch a metre-wide circle, keeping the mulch clear of the trunk.

Water thoroughly for the first two summers, and thin the fruitlets in early July, leaving one or two per cluster. It feels brutal on a young tree, but the fruit will be larger, the branches less strained, and the tree far more likely to crop well the following year. Do not plant a new apple where an old one has stood; replant disease is real, and a fresh spot or a large pot will save you years of disappointment.