There is hardly a better reward for the hard work of gardening than being able to enjoy delicious fruit straight from the trees in your own garden in summer and autumn. Since many garden owners do not want to sacrifice their often not very large lawns for large fruit trees, using columnar fruit as a privacy screen can kill two birds with one stone.
Can columnar fruit be used as a privacy screen?
Pillar fruit offers symbolic privacy and at the same time enables fruit to be grown. When planting in the form of a hedge, a planting distance of at least 50 cm is recommended. For optimal results, you can plant two rows staggered. Columnar fruit is also suitable for terraces and balconies.
Planting columnar fruit as a productive hedge
If the available garden area is rather small anyway, it makes sense to use the available space in as diverse and sensible a way as possible. Columnar fruit does not offer complete privacy protection that would be comparable to the opacity of a thuja hedge or a beech hedge in summer. But if a more symbolic demarcation from the neighboring property is enough for you, then you can at least create a productive hedge around your garden with columnar fruit. As an alternative to the relatively high-priced columnar fruit varieties, espalier trees can also be used, whose branches are specifically trained along stretched metal wires. Please note that columnar fruit trees can reach quite an impressive height and that certain minimum distances from the neighboring property must sometimes be maintained.
Pillar fruit in a pot on the terrace
Pillar fruit can also be an excellent way to take advantage of sunlight and warmth on a south-facing patio to grow sun-loving fruit varieties. For example, on a suitably sunny terrace, the following types of fruit thrive well in the pot:
- pillar cherries
- Pillar Apricots
- Pillar peaches
When growing columnar fruit in a pot, it is important to ensure that drainage holes (€19.00 on Amazon) and a drainage layer in the pot prevent the roots from becoming waterlogged. During the summer months, however, due to the sometimes extreme temperatures on the terrace, it is important to ensure a regular supply of water. Columnar fruit in pots must also be fertilized appropriately to ensure a satisfactory yield.
Harvest fruit from the privacy screen on your own balcony
Columnar fruit even fulfills the dream of hobby gardeners who only have a balcony for their gardening ambitions. However, due to their susceptibility to wind and weather, columnar fruit trees should not be cultivated in balcony boxes or in pots directly on the balcony railing, but rather in a sufficiently large planter behind the balcony railing. If cared for well, columnar fruit can serve as a blooming privacy screen on a balcony and at the same time provide tasty fruit.
Tip
If columnar fruit varieties such as columnar apples or columnar cherries are planted as a hedge in the form of a privacy screen, then despite your efforts to create as dense a privacy screen as possible, you should always maintain a planting distance of no less than 50 centimeters between the plants. You will get better growth, yield and privacy results if you plant your fruit hedge made of columnar fruit in two rows, each about 40 to 50 centimeters apart from each other.
