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Out on Long Island, where nurseries are as thick as crabgrass, Henry Leuthardt is a legend. Inheritor of his father’s business, he is the leading espalier man in the area. If you want apple or pear trees that look like a candelabra or the ribs of fans, you go to Henry.

The gorgeous, mature espaliers that grow beside Leuthardt’s driveway were planted in 1958. Their trunks are now as thick as your thighs, yet the trees are a mere 8 feet tall. Some of the apple trees bear more than 70 pounds of fruit a year, and every piece is intensely flavored because the trees are uniformly exposed to the sun.

I wanted to have an espalier in my yard not only because I like geometry, but also because I have scarcely any room. The only way to realize my dream of blossoms in springtime and apples in autumn is to train the trees on a trellis, near a wall.

So I went to visit Leuthardt one spring day, when the wind was pushing fat clouds over the flat, sandy landscape. Clad in khakis, an old checked shirt, and a hat that looked like a collapsed pudding, he said, "No time to talk." But the ends of his mouth turned up slightly as he said it.

An hour and a half later, he had not only talked nonstop about espaliered apples and pears and his father’s horticultural training in Alsace-Lorraine -- while simultaneously pruning and packing young trees to send to clients -- but he had also talked me into taking five young apple trees. "If you want to do this yourself, you’d better try training them as a Belgian fence," he said. "You’ll see the full shape this year." And the flat pattern of diamonds would be perfect for the wall of my little Bronx garden.

Down in a cool basement with a sand-covered floor, he searched through piles of 2-year-old bare-root trees (that he had dug from his nursery beds) for five with suitable shapes.

Back home, my five little trees looked rather puny. We planted them one afternoon, just as it began to rain. Then we tied the young branches into a basic pattern of intercrossing Y’s against a trellis of 2-by-2-inch boards and galvanized wire.

As they grow, we’ll bend the leaders and tie them to the top rail of the trellis, and prune the shoots back twice in the summer to keep the plants under control. In fall, we’ll apply lime to encourage blossoms. In three years, we will harvest a respectable crop of five varieties of apples from a space small enough to park a bike in.
This article appeared in Garden Design, A World Publications magazine. You can subscribe online.