If you don’t have a massive backyard to call your own, don’t worry—you don’t have to give up on the dream of picking fresh fruit right outside your door. Columnar fruit trees are a total game-changer for small spaces. However, these specialized trees can be a bit pricey at the garden center, which leads many people to wonder: Can you actually grow your own columnar fruit trees from scratch?
Is DIY Columnar Fruit Tree Growing Only for the Pros?
Achieving that sleek, upright “pillar” shape usually happens in one of two ways. It’s either baked right into the plant’s genetics, or the tree is meticulously trained through specific pruning techniques. For most home gardeners, the genetic route is the only one that really works, mainly because many columnar varieties don’t handle heavy pruning very well.
The truth is, these trees are specialized cultivars. For the average hobby gardener, growing them from scratch isn’t really doable. It’s definitely not as simple as just planting a few seeds and hoping for the best. Plus, many of these specific varieties are actually patent-protected, meaning you can’t legally propagate them anyway.
Buying Your Columnar Trees
At the end of the day, your best bet is to head to a reputable nursery and pick up a young columnar tree. While they might cost a little more upfront, there’s plenty of good news: if you give them the right spot and a little TLC, these trees will thrive for years. You can expect some pretty impressive harvests, which more than makes up for the initial investment!
You can find all sorts of fruit in columnar form these days, including:
- Cherries
- European plums
- Japanese plums
- Pears
- Apples
- Peaches
- Raspberries
- Apricots
