This means that fruit trees can now be part of anyone’s small backyard ideas, offering delicate and beautiful blooms in the spring followed by a gorgeous crop of delicious fruit. Some of the best small fruit trees can be a prominent feature in a garden and will attract wildlife and beneficial pollinators to the yard as well.
The likes of apples, peaches, cherries, citrus fruits, and olives are all well suited to growing in small gardens. Whether in pots or in the ground, they can be successfully incorporated into many backyard designs.
Lemons and oranges offer an array of colorful fruit in a small space
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8 of the best fruit trees for small spaces
Not all trees will be suitable for small areas, and poor consideration of sizes is a common backyard mistake that can’t be made. When considering the best trees for small gardens, consider ultimate height and spread to ensure they won’t dominate the space. If you are not blessed with a lot of space, choosing this dwarf variety opens up many possibilities.
In terms of growing fruit trees, all of the trees listed below can thrive in the ground or they can be grown as a fruit tree in pots. Using them in a container garden can be beneficial, as citrus trees can benefit from being moved to a sheltered area during the colder months.
1. Bonanza Patio Peach Tree
The peach tree in my yard is still producing full sized fruit
(Image credit: Alamy/Peter DAnderson)
- to rise: 4-6 feet
- Spread: 5-8 feet
- Face: bright sun
- Harvest period: summer
Peach trees have always been seen as crops that need a greenhouse to grow. However, the new varieties are perfect for cooler climates and these modern varieties on dwarf rootstock allow you to get ripe, juicy apricots even in a small backyard.
Bonanza Peach Tree, available from Fast Growing Trees (Opens in a new tab)provides an opportunity for a large number of peaches either in the ground or in a pot.
Place your peach tree in a sunny, sheltered location and keep it well watered and fed to ensure plenty of delicious fruit. Plants can benefit from mulching in late winter and early spring to combat peach leaf curl.
Any peach tree pruning will be reduced due to the dwarf variety, but pruning to ensure an open frame in the center will be an important maintenance task.
2. The Big Fig
Figs can take up to two months to ripen on the tree
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- to rise: 3-5 feet
- Spread: 3-5 feet
- Face: bright sun
- Harvest period: summer
Figs can give any backyard, even the smallest one, a Mediterranean vibe, yet they can still give a good crop of figs even in cooler climates. Fig cultivation also provides structural design elements to the space, thanks to its large, lobed leaves.
A Fignominal Fig, available from Burpee (Opens in a new tab)It is a dwarf fig tree and one of the best fig trees for a small space. It offers a great harvest of figs from medium-sized fruits, perfect for using fresh or baked.
Plant figs in full sun in well-draining soil. Figs benefit from being fed liquid tomato feed while the fruits are developing and also being covered around the plants. Compact trees make fig tree pruning simpler, which is a must do because fig trees produce fruit on one-year-old wood.
3. Improved Meyer lemon tree
Meyer lemons taste sweeter than traditional lemons
(Image credit: Getty/Tim Gainey)
- to rise: 5-7 feet
- Spread: 5 ft
- Face: bright sun
- Harvest period: Differs
Lemon trees are perfect for small spaces and are another tree that can bring a Mediterranean feel to a space. Fragrant flowers and fruit thrive in bright, sunny spots, and lemon trees can have flowers and fruit at the same time.
An improved lemon tree available at Burpee (Opens in a new tab)It is a self-fertile tree and a hybrid between a lemon and an orange. Lemons are sweet and aromatic and this compact cultivar is capable of producing a large crop of round fruits.
Lemons are tender when frozen and need protection from temperatures below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Lemons are pruned from their second year to maintain their shape, and if you are not sure when to prune your lemon tree, the best time is in late winter to early spring.
4. Espalier grafted apple tree
Espalier apples fruit on short spurs along its trained branches
(Image credit: Alamy/Mike Ford)
- to rise: Differs
- Spread: Differs
- Face: bright sun
- Harvest period: late summer into fall
Apple trees are one of the best trees you can have, and growing fruit in these trained shapes is a great way to get lots of fruit in small spaces. Another modern variation on fruit growing is the family apple tree, where multiple varieties are grafted together onto a single tree.
The Espalier Edible grafted apple tree is available from Nature Hills (Opens in a new tab) She has six different types of apples grafted onto a single trained tree, namely Granny Smith, Gravenstein, Honeycrisp, Red Delicious, Rome, and Red Fuji. This means lots of different tasty apples in a small space by training the tree to the wall or fence – so much fruit that you may need to think about how you store the apples.
This self-pollinating tree can provide a unique design feature to any small backyard and take advantage of space that doesn’t often get used. The time to plant apple trees is during the winter and early spring, and pruning of apples is routinely done in the winter—the same time frame as when pruning apple trees.
An alternative trained form of apple that can work in small yards is Burpee’s Columnar Scarlet Sentinel (Opens in a new tab)with this dwarf columnar tree that offers plenty of fruit without taking up much space.
5. Scarlet Gem Dwarf Cherry Tree
Cherry begins to ripen from early summer
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- to rise: 6-7 feet
- Spread: 3 ft
- Face: bright sun
- Harvest period: summer
Cherry is now commonly available on a dwarfed rootstock, so it allows you to grow the sweet, juicy fruit even in small backyards. Carmine Jewel cherry tree is available at Nature Hills (Opens in a new tab) It is a dwarf cultivar that produces a crop of dark red to purple fruit in summer.
The other feature of the cherry, in addition to its fruit, is its stunning springtime blooms, the white and pink flowers of which will cover the dwarf tree. Cherry trees like a sunny, sheltered location and getting a good mulch of homemade compost each winter.
The best time to plant cherry trees is in the spring or fall. To prune a cherry tree, you work to open the center of the tree after the summer harvest ends.
Cherry trees are some of the best fast-growing fruit trees, and you may benefit from covering them with netting when the fruits are ripe to prevent birds from stealing all of your crop.
6. European dwarf olive tree
Olives start out green and turn black as they ripen
(Image credit: Getty/Halfdark)
- to rise: 6 ft
- Spread: 2 ft
- Face: bright sun
- Harvest period: He falls
Olive trees love to bask in the warm sun and have become a popular backyard motif in hotter regions of the United States. Fully grown olive trees can grow quite large, however, dwarf varieties make them suitable for small backyards, and olives can be kept smaller with regular pruning.
Olive offers silvery foliage year-round and small, fragrant white flowers in spring. Dwarf olive tree, available from Wal-Mart (Opens in a new tab)It can be damaged by severe frosts, so it should be brought undercover or wrapped in fleece unless you live in US Hardiness Zone 8 or warmer.
To prune olive trees, flip the plants back to maintain their shape and you will complete this task in spring or summer.
7. Dwarf pomegranate tree
The pomegranate tree can provide benefit throughout the year
(Image credit: Getty/claudio.arnese)
- to rise: 2-4 feet
- Spread: 2-4 feet
- Face: bright sun
- Harvest period: summer through fall
The pomegranate is an attractive small flowering shrub that has small copper-red leaves that then turn bright green and finally yellow fall. It also produces orange-red colored flowers in summer followed by orange-yellow spherical fruit.
Dwarf Pomegranate Tree, available at Walmart (Opens in a new tab)wants to grow in full sun in well-drained soil and is drought-tolerant once established.
8. Calamondin orange tree
Calamondin orange is a mix between a mandarin and an orange
(Image credit: Alamy/mauritius Images GmbH)
- to rise: 8 ft
- Spread: 5 ft
- Face: Full to partial sun
- Harvest period: summer through fall
Growing citrus trees like oranges means you can enjoy the fragrant spring blossoms and then the deliciously refreshing fruit. Calamondin Orange Tree, available from fast growing trees (Opens in a new tab)It is a cross between a mandarin and an orange and produces a small orange-yellow fruit.
Calamondin oranges are among the most cold-tolerant of all oranges, with temperatures down to 23 degrees Fahrenheit, but will benefit from protection during the colder months. It is one of the best fruit trees to grow in pots, so you can move it indoors for the winter.
Plant your orange tree in free-draining, slightly acidic soil, keep it well watered, and prune citrus trees in spring to reduce the plant’s center.
There is now a wide range of fruit trees suitable for growing in small spaces. And the likes of apples, peaches, figs and cherries are all suitable for growing walls or fences in forms trained to take advantage of commonly underutilized spaces.
It’s a realistic aspiration to have a large crop of fruit to feed your family in a small backyard, with the added bonus of gorgeous blooms, strong fragrances, and the sense of structure trees can bring to a garden design.
If you are wondering when to plant fruit trees, it will depend on how you purchased them. Bare fruit trees are usually planted during the winter months in preparation to begin growth when spring comes, while container grown fruit trees can be planted year-round.
