Start With the Sun

Fruit trees are solar-powered, and no amount of feeding or pruning will compensate for a shady site. Most top fruit — apples, pears, plums, cherries — wants at least six hours of direct sunlight a day during the growing season, and the more the better. A south-facing slope or an open spot that catches the sun from mid-morning until early evening is close to ideal. East-facing ground is a decent second choice: it warms gently, which reduces the risk of blossom damage from a sudden spring thaw. North-facing sites, or anything shaded by mature trees, buildings or hedges for much of the day, will give you spindly growth, poor cropping and fruit that ripens late and lacks flavour.

Watch your proposed site over a full day before you commit. Shadows move, and a patch that looks bright at noon in February may be in gloom by September, when the sun sits lower. Note the direction of the prevailing wind too, which in most of the UK is south-westerly.

Drainage Matters More Than Soil Type

Fruit trees hate wet feet. Waterlogged roots suffocate, and the resulting stress invites canker, collar rot and root disease. If your ground holds puddles for more than a day after heavy rain, treat drainage as your first problem, not your last. Dig a test hole about 60cm deep and fill it with water. If it drains away within a few hours, you are fine. If it is still there the next morning, you have work to do.

Clay soils can be improved by planting on ridges or mounds, or by installing land drains before you plant a single tree. Adding grit or organic matter to a planting hole alone rarely solves the problem, because the surrounding soil still acts as a sump. Free-draining loams and sandy soils are more forgiving, though they dry out faster and may need mulching and irrigation in a hot summer. Anything between pH 6.0 and 7.0 suits most fruit; if you are on very acid or very alkaline ground, a simple soil test will tell you whether to add lime or sulphur.

Shelter Without Shade

Wind is the quiet destroyer of orchards. It snaps branches, rubs bark, strips blossom and knocks young fruit from the tree. In exposed parts of the country, particularly the west and the north, good shelter can make the difference between cropping and not. But shelter and shade are not the same thing, and a solid barrier of tall trees close to your orchard will rob you of sunlight and create a frost pocket.

• Aim for a permeable windbreak — a hedge, a slatted fence or a line of mixed native shrubs — rather than a solid wall.
• Position it at least one and a half times the height of the mature tree away from your fruit trees, on the windward side.
• Hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel and field maple all make good, wildlife-friendly windbreaks.
• Avoid planting in a hollow or at the bottom of a slope, where cold air pools and late frosts will kill your blossom.

Gently sloping ground is a gift: cold air drains away downhill, and the frost risk drops markedly. Frost pockets are the enemy of early-flowering varieties such as plums and cherries.

Give Every Tree Room to Grow

It is easy to crowd an orchard when the trees are whips. Think about the mature size, not the sapling in front of you. A standard apple can spread eight metres; even a semi-dwarfing rootstock will want three to four metres in every direction. Spacing depends on rootstock and how you intend to train the trees — bush, cordon, espalier or stepover — but the general rule is simple: leave more room than feels necessary.

Allow at least three to four metres between bush fruit trees on dwarfing rootstocks, and more for larger ones. Remember you also need access for mowing, pruning, harvesting and a wheelbarrow. If space is tight, choose cordons or stepovers along a fence, or train apples and pears as espaliers against a sunny wall. Leave a sensible gap from hedges, boundaries and drains too — roots travel further than most people expect.

Prepare the Ground Before You Plant

Getting the soil right before planting pays you back for decades. Start in autumn for bare-root planting in winter, which is by far the cheapest and most successful way to establish fruit trees. Clear perennial weeds thoroughly — couch grass and bindweed will outcompete a young tree. Dig the whole area over rather than just the planting holes, working in plenty of well-rotted manure or garden compost.

• Test the soil and correct the pH if needed.
• Mark out your spacing with canes before digging anything.
• Install tree stakes and guards at planting, not weeks later.
• Mulch generously after planting with bark or compost, keeping it clear of the trunk.
• Water young trees well through their first two summers, even in a wet year.

Take your time over the siting stage. A tree is a long commitment, and an orchard planted in the right place will reward you with fruit, blossom and shade for a generation or more.