Why are American Backyard Orchards So Ugly?

an american orchard, and it is the exact opposite of ugly

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I spent an afternoon last summer with my mother walking through the old section (mid 1800s) of the township cemetery in western Michigan where the family is from. There were three very noticeable “waves” of deceased: children under 9, women from ~20-35 (I assume child birth related), and early 70s. Times were tough…

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@Barkslip

Beautiful! But I’m getting dizzy just thinking about driving the riding lawnmower around all those trees!

I like my Freedom Fries crispy and my orchards ugly.

But seriously – I don’t have any water to spare in an orchard setting for ornamentals. Also, I’m constantly tearing up the soil around plants getting after gophers and squirrels – the pretty Azaleas would just get in the way. And how would I mow my between row cover-crops and use the clippings as mulch?

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If you want people to take you seriously, you need to correct your spelling and grammar errors.

Beautiful yard Barkslip. I love it.

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I love it. Looks great.

@SteveM

Hey, I just realized that I love ugly.

And… any day you learn something new is a good day.

Mike

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Charming!

All orchards seem to have the personality of the owner. If you’re a commercial grower, you will have neat rows with many trees. If you have forty trees or twenty trees on your property that is a lot of trees for one person to take care of; fewer trees can be very rewarding and still a lot of work!

Some people can afford only one bareroot tree a year,or they have limited space. Beauty is totally in the eye of the orchardist. To have the joy of the blossoms of spring is ‘beauty’ to me as are the trees in summer with branches filled with fruit. What is more beautiful than that? And then we have fall when the leaves turn the colors of gold, brown and copper. Its beautiful,it is your orchard, its in your backyard. I don’t think orchards should look, ‘cute’, they are constant works in progress driven by the passion of growing fruit.

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@Barkslip, beautiful grounds.

@Naomi94, for me under planting my fruit trees is just a place for bugs to hide and for me to worry about maintaining and stepping on whatever I would underplant. Wood chips work for me.

The garden below was half planted by me and half planted by the birds and wind. I occasionally move or remove plants. There is a blueberry in there somewhere.

Here’s where I grow edibles. Some of the plants nature planted. It’s mostly haphazard but I find it a tranquil place to sit at the end of the day. As @fruitnut said “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Unfortunately some of this has to be cleared to make room for more edibles. I do have some perrenial flowers in this spot to keep the bees happy all season.

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One thing that is useful to do if you grow muscadines is to maintain a flower border somewhere with things in it like black eye Susan and blanket flowers. The reason being that muscadines are pollinated by very small solitary bees. These flowers attract and feed these bees through the summer. I also have a spot in my garden for canna lilies for attracting humming birds, and somewhere I always find space for some Mexican sunflowers, marigolds and zinnias. Daffodils, pears and camellias are blooming now.

I must admit that my garden usually looks kind of messy through the winter. That’s because I have buckets and tarp stationed around my yard for quickly covering things or putting buckets of water next to the grafted trunks of a citrus trees when we get a freeze warning. Also I don’t ordinarily remove the dead annuals and remains herbaceous perennials from the flower beds until spring. That provides some protection to cold sensitive tubers, and it helps me to remember what’s where in spring so that when I go plant annuals I’m not accidentally digging up and removing desirable perennials.

Here are a couple of pics from last summer. One is of what you see when you are looking from backyard vineyard part of my orchard toward the house. And the other depicts how the flower beds next to the swing arbor looks in late summer.

Oh another challenge with both flower beds and vegetable gardens in Georgia. Our July and August is so hot that a lot of things kind of burn up. With me, the grass is growing super fast and fruit is needing to be harvested and processed so usually in terms of yard maintenance I’m doing really good just to keep up with the mowing. All the flower beds get choked with weeds during that time. That’s why I’m slowly reducing the number of flower beds. I would rather have just a few beds that I can keep looking good than lots and lots of beds that look like hell during the summer.

God bless.

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blue?

Here’s what’s going on

in my orchard right now:


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I always think that my flower beds are ugly at the end of the summer when they are overgrown and spent. And then I go back and look at the spring and June pictures. My flowers are mainly perennials but they still require several hours of weeding during the summer and several clean ups.
Tulips are convenient they give bright splash of color in spring and then they are gone and do not bother anyone.

The same flowerbed later.

Some pictures with fruit trees or bushes somewhere in the view.



I personally think that the well kept orchard is always beautiful, even it has no flowers in it.

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I circle 350+ plantings. I listen to the blues while I mow and it keeps me plowing forward…

Dax

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Well part of the skill is in presentation. In this thread I saw a link to other edible landscapes, and they looked good mostly because of the skill of the photographer.
I try to find the beauty when taking pictures, and learning the basic concepts of photography help presentations work. I try but I’m not that good at it. Once in awhile I get it right. I started from a different place then many. I grew for over 40 years attractive, unusual ornamental plants. I found most fruiting plants ugly and messy. I had little interest. After awhile I wanted more from my hobby and took up edibles. I have always grown some, just not on a massive scale. I grew up with edibles in the yard too.I do all the gardening and landscaping. Edibles are hidden in here, not many but some. A plum tree, figs, and strawberries. In this photo they are still too small to be seen.

My backyard orchard is downright ugly and have few pictures of the mess! I’ll figure it out one day!

To demonstrate how photography can help, I was at an airport. What can I photograph and make look artistic? Not much! Steel gray colors, cold, and metallic. So I went for geometric shapes and to accent them, to bring out the beauty not seen by just looking. Conditions were not the best. Again I went for patterns, This is about the best I could do. A good practice is to make something ordinary, look good, framing the photo, etc to focus on an element. I try and think about this when planting too.

Here we have shadow and light, the rule of thirds (1/3 sky, 2/3 other), balance. A vehicle on the left, a vehicle on the right. Not perfect, not centered perfectly. If I had all day i would take 20 photos, and see what worked. here I took one.
I just mention this to help show off what is beautiful in your garden. Maybe a whole shot shows warts and all, focus on elements that work, and showcase them.

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That picture makes me wonder how they got that in there and how they are going to get it back out again. God bless.

Yeah, it didn’t fit!

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Sorry no photos due to time of year, but I’ve planted my trees kind of at random and not in neat rows. Also, I plan on training the apples and pears to open center or modified leader since I believe those shapes are more visually appealing than straight, narrow, centerlal leader or single file wall design.

I’m a big fan of more of a natural landscape design. It may not look neat and tidy to some. However, our orchard and yard is well kept. I believe there is a balance between the sterile, overlay manacured property that you would find on HGTV or an office park, and the complete chaos of weeds and neglect.

We’re hoping to get some native wildflowers in this season which will help with the colors. Also, juniper, pine and spruce add a touch of green year round.

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