It is most important to see that the bulk of the fruit is planted in one part of the garden on its own. It is a great mistake to try and grow apples, pears and plums in a vegetable garden. Or, to put it another way-please don’t plant vegetables and salads in between fruit trees.

Furthermore, a wall will shelter the soil for a foot or two at the base of it, from rain, and thus it is necessary to adopt some system to ensure that the roots of trees growing against walls get the moisture they need. Some people for this reason bury 3-inch agricultural drainpipes upright in the soil, 3 feet apart and a foot away from the wall, and then water can be poured into these sometimes so as to wet the soil below.

An east wall will grow pears like Conference, Glou Morceau and Marie Louise; plums like Victoria, Oullin’s Golden Gage, and Denniston’s Superb Gage; cherries such as Emperor Francis and Early Rivers as well as the redcurrants and gooseberries recommended for the north wall. A west wall will grow dessert pears, first-class dessert plums, dessert cherries providing pollinating pears are planted, and really first-class dessert apples. In the south such a wall will grow peaches, nectarines and apricots also.

Before the trees are planted the gardener should nail wood battens 11 inches wide and inches thick against the wall, 8 feet apart. Strong ex-telephone wire should then be stretched tightly in between these battens, 9 inches apart, and the branches as they grow are tied to the wires. Always plant the tree so that its base is about 8 inches from the base of the wall, and when the branches are trained on the wires, these are some inches from the wall, and this narrow air space does help in the control of red spider.

In the first few years these clippings were raked up to act as a mulch around the trees themselves, but that was while a ring of soil 3 feet across was kept lightly cultivated. At the end of three years these rings were grassed down.

In a very dry summer this may have to be done two or three times a week in the evening time.