In doing research on High Density Home Orchards, I kept running across a term that I felt deserved an explanation.  The word “pleaching” seems to be a catch-all for several similar techniques that were implemented in the formal gardens of the ancient Roman Empire.  Generally speaking, pleaching is yet another tool at the urban gardener’s disposal.  Like espalier, pleaching is a method used to train normally unruly trees into visually striking, and space defining features.

For our purposes, a more laid-back approach to pleaching was the perfect solution for the citrus trees that we wanted to plant on the west side of our home.  We have a long, blank wall that opens up to our neighbor’s parking lot. As exposed as it is, it comes off extremely dull and boring.  To give an idea of perspective, we have roughly four feet from the side of our home to the back of our neighbor’s curb.  Closest to the curb, we have an espaliered fence consisting of apple trees, plums, and peaches.  At its highest point, the espaliered fence is three and a half feet tall.  In trying to bleed this property of every bit of it’s plantable space, we had the idea of planting our citrus trees behind the espaliered fence, and train them to grow straight up before we let them branch out and into each other, similar to to the below picture.

Pleached Trees

Our plan is to plant each tree eighteen to twenty-four inches apart.  Once they grow together, we can then prune them as if they are one tree.

In early January, we pruned each tree of all the limbs that weren’t growing straight up and staked them to some awesome plastic-coated metal stakes (they don’t rot folks) that we purchased at Buchanan’s.   When all of the tree trunks reach four feet tall or so, we’ll cut the top off to encourage outward growth.  This first season that they are in the ground, we probably won’t let them set fruit.  When young trees produce fruit, all of the energy goes into its ripening and not into the infrastructure of the tree itself (honestly, I probably won’t have the heart to pull ALL of the buds off, we’ll probably let each tree put on one or two).

With good weather and a lot of rich, nitrogen-laced fertilizer, along with plenty of water, the citrus trees should grow quickly, hopefully growing into each other in a season or two.

If we were doing something besides citrus in this area (ie. apples or stone fruits), the following picture illustrates a very creative technique—kind of like an espalier/pleach cross.

Pleach/Espalier Cross

So far, I haven’t really touched on the different methods of pleaching.  Most literally, pleaching technically involves the growing together of branches from several different trees, similar to grafting.  At the point where the branches touch each other, they can be manual wounded and encouraged to grow into each other (again, similar to grafting).  This naturally-occuring process is known as inosculation, and while it makes for some visually striking landscaping, I think I’ll keep my citrus trees physically separated. One advantage that I’ve heard for letting the trees grow together though, is that their systems begin to rely on each other, hypothetically making for stronger, hardier trees. In the end, who knows? I may change my mind and go down that road.

A more relaxed approach to pleaching (which might not technically be pleaching at all) is that of just a raised hedgerow, in which the trees are simply allowed to grow into each other. When they reach the desired shape, they can then be pruned with clippers like any normal hedge. This method works especially well with citrus trees. They perform best when vigorously pruned, hence the reason why citrus trees don’t much care for espalier techniques. They like to bloom and fruit on new growth.

Within the next two weeks, all of our citrus trees are going into the ground. We wanted to make sure the cold weather was behind us, before they were planted. On that note, it is extremely important that your fruit trees are covered in the coming weeks if any more rogue cold snaps make their ways into our area. A dip into the 30’s, paired with a light frost can damage all of the new, delicate blossoms and fruit that are currently adorning all of the fruit trees around Houston.

I will be sure to closely document the planting process when that time comes and do my best to put an in-depth post up about the goings on. In the meantime, take a drive around town and check out all of the beautiful trees that are bursting at the seems with Spring color.

More to come.