Plants that Give Back

Since moving to my new house, I've been intent upon getting a new pair of columnar apple trees. I had two in my old, smaller suburban backyard, and they were wonderful. The Emerald Spire grew to about 10 feet tall and less than 3 feet wide, and had apples bunched on it so tightly they looked more like giant grapes. The Northstar was shorter at about 7 feet tall, and it didn't have as many apples on it, but it was so unobtrusive and small you might never even realize it was a full fledged apple tree unless you looked closely!

We have enough room in our new yard for full size apple trees, but I'm a big fan of "less is more", since it means I can plant more variety if I keep the individual plants small. And they were so easy to care for and productive I wanted to repeat the process.

Went looking for some of them at the local nursery, didn't find any. One of the workers there pointed us northward to another nursery, so today we trekked off in the rain and the wind to visit both Bird's English Garden nursery and Tsugawa's. The former was a complete bust; most of their stock was in very sad shape, and they had little stock to begin with. The only staff in sight was a non-communicative young man doing something with a backhoe. The latter nursery, however, was a total win! If you happen to be in Northwest Oregon or Southwest Washington, I highly recommend Tsugawa's, right off the freeway in Woodland, WA. Helpful, friendly staff, healthy and interesting plants, great little store inside, lots of water plants and a wide selection of bonsais to boot!

We ended up with three varieties* of columnar apples, two dwarf cherries, a self-pollinating peach, a four-way almond, a quince, two hazelnuts, five blueberry bushes, two honeyberry bushes, and a bright pink "Valley Valentine" Pieris japonicus. We needed a forklift to get it all back to the truck, drove all the back roads home to avoid doing 70 on the freeway, and now we just have to get it all in the ground!

* For anyone new to growing apples, cherries, blueberries, or many other varieties of fruit, there's a reason I purchased in multiples: many fruit trees and berry bushes need a different variety to provide pollination. If you purchase only one apple tree, for instance, your apple yield will be poor or non-existant. Blueberries are well-known for this requirement. There are varieties that are self-pollinating, and there are trees with multiple varieties grafted to a single rootstock that will self-pollinate. If you don't know if your tree or shrub needs a pollinator, look it up on the Internet, or ask your nursery staff.