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
