Citrus as espaliers or on a trellis, make wonderful hedges and screens if maintained properly. they can provide you with more fruit than you would imagine.
Citrus, especially mandarins, oranges and grapefruits have rich foliage that can be hand clipped to make a fairly dense privacy fence. Lemons are more open growing but can still make a screen. Kumquats can also be used, but they are much slower growing and have more of an open habit.
What are the drawbacks to having citrus as a hedge? Well, if the trees are planted along a public walkway, the only problem would be the neighbors helping themselves to all the fruit when you aren’t looking!
Here are a few examples of the using citrus espaliered against a fence line.
These trees are planted along a driveway where there is not much room to grow anything else. Instead of looking at an unattractive wood fence, wouldn’t you rather look at rich foliage or fruit?
And if we have to water, I prefer to water shrubs and trees where I get some return. In this case sweet oranges, mandarins and grapefruit.
There are 9 citrus trees planted along this driveway. They were selected first on the variety of fruit we enjoy. Second, we selected varieties with a staggered harvest time. As delicious as these fruit are, we would get overwhelmed if our Honey Mandarin ripened alongside our Cara Cara oranges. We just couldn’t eat it all.
Mandarin Honey
Mandarin Satsuma
Orange Washington Navel
Orange Cara Cara
Grapefruit Oro Blanco
Pummelo Chandler
Orange Valencia
Lemon Eureka
Lemon Meyer
There are even two additional mandarins out of frame that are young. I’ll update the list when I test them.
What an incredible harvest of Washington Navel oranges Kay has and check out how much is left on this tree. We share fruit every season.
Do you like lemons? I count a hundred gallons of lemonade here.
Oro Blanco grapefruits are so sweet. We eat one or two a day and they hold on the tree very well. This year the harvest has lasted from February through April.
