Espalier pears

I am in Toronto, and I am searching for a pear espallier. All the nurseries I search don’t have it. Any ideas where I can get one?

Espaliers have to be grown in place, so one buys a very young tree and trains it. It’s almost like turning the tree into a branched vine and training all the major branches as if they were vines.

@marknmt
Actually some nurseries sell pre-espaliered trees.

2 Likes

Pears can be aggressive growers. You can have pears covering a large espalier setup by year 2 under ideal conditions. I will say they are high maintenance as they send shoots like mad.

Well, thank you @Richard, you’re quite right. I’ve never seen that before.

I’ve seen them for sale in years gone by at Springhouse Gardens, Nicholasville, KY.

1 Like

@tamorim

You will find some fruit espalier in nurseries but they are going to be quite expensive as they require a lot more work and time than simply growing a grafted tree and selling it.

You can probably order one to be made through a local nursery, but you may not get it until a year or two if its a one-off.

Apple is most common in nurseries I’ve seen.

Grow your own. Do a Belgian fence design with individual trees and you can start right away. Plenty of videos out there to see how it’s done.

Much easier than grafting a multi variety tree as though grafting isn’t too difficult, getting the grafts in the right spots and direction is a lot harder to do and will take a few years to get what you want on the single tree.

IMO