Espalier Tree Seller

A friend of mine who is a landscape architect was telling me that his company recently did the landscaping for a big country music star’s mansion and was telling me that one of the things they did was to buy several pre-trained, 5-6 year old espalier Trees. Turns out there is a company in Tennessee that almost exclusively provides these to high-end customers. I had no idea there was such a business here in TN, and thought some of you espalier lovers might enjoy seeing some of their products and photos. I didn’t see any prices- I’d say its one of those “if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it” things! haha.

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Kevin,
I’ve seen interviews of this owner in some espelier training videos before. Did not know that he is your " neighbor" :grin:

Pears seem to be a top choice for espelier trees. One of these days I will try it. Thanks for posting.

I didn’t know about these guys either. Its a couple hours away but I’m ever in the area I’ll have to drive by and see if I can see any of of them! Some of the photos are just amazing!

@alan : Maybe some of your customers could use these. From what I know of your customers, they may be among the few who can afford such things! :slight_smile:

I sent them an e-mail this morning when I saw your post. After looking at their site it is obvious they are skilled at self promotion, successfully peddling the owner as some kind of incredible artisan for bringing back a forgotten art-form, suggesting it required heroic effort. What a croc. As if espaliers aren’t still very popular in Europe.

Still, I did want to know what they keep for inventory and a price list. Really it doesn’t take long to produce a nice espalier, but I do have customers that splurge on pre-fab espaliers and usually wind up with crappy varieties. It this company has interesting stuff, I probably can sell some of their trees. I will develop espaliers for customers but don’t want to give up the space in my nursery to grow them ready-to-go myself. They need a lot of space in order to assure they grow symmetrically.

They want $395 for a tree in a 25 gallon pot, which is fine for a tree with that much work on it, but most of their pear espaliers are Keifer (yuck) and their apple selections fairly pedestrian with Black Twig as the only non-modern. The apple rootstocks are all 111 and pears are on cally or bet.

I wouldn’t recommend any of this for my customers and will continue to convert free standing trees from my nursery into espaliers for any clients that want them. I’d have to charge at least $600 per tree if I used theirs.

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Thanks for the update, Alan. I was very curious about the price-not that I actually wanted to buy one. For $400 per tree (plus delivery, I’m guessing, which I’d think would be very expensive on a large, fragile, espaliered tree) you would think they’d use an appropriate and perhaps unique type of tree.

BTW…the house where my friend installed these is just over an hour from me near Nashville and used to be owned by County Music Star Alan Jackson. It listed for $38 million but sold for $28 million to the guy who created an online company called Copart USA which sells junk cars via online auctions. I’ve never even heard of the site and the guy made enough to buy a $28 million house! Anyway, the new owner is apparently really into fruit trees and is creating an orchard in addition to espalier trees. Here is the house if you’re interested, but I think this was before the fruit trees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BFV80BFgOQ