As this system of filling, or interplanting, commercial orchards is becoming more and more common, the suitability of dwarf trees, for this purpose, becomes more generally evident.
3. _For school gardens._--Thus far school gardens in America have been mostly temporary and experimental affairs. But we are already satisfied that they have come to stay, and that gardening in some form will be a permanent feature of the curriculum in many of our best schools. As soon as a school garden becomes a permanent institution, with ground of its own to be held in use year after year, the dependence on annual crops will give way to the use of various perennial plants, shrubs and trees.
And among these dwarf fruit trees will naturally be one of the first introductions. Their small size adapts them to the school premises, their habit of early bearing again serves to recommend them most strikingly, and the special opportunity which they offer to pupils to observe details of pruning and other items of tree management, make them almost a first necessity in the permanent school garden.
4. _For covering walls and fences._--There are many places about every farm, suburban establishment, or even about many city homes, where back walls and fences could be put out of sight very agreeably by almost any sort of foliage. Various ornamental climbers and creepers are in vogue for this service; but a certain number of such unattractive walls and fences could be treated quite as acceptably, from the esthetic point of view, with trained fruit trees, and the result would be more satisfactory in some other ways. Apples or pears trained as cordons or espaliers, or peaches, nectarines, or cherries in fan forms, will thrive on almost any brick or wooden wall, except those with a northern front. It is necessary only to supply a proper soil, to plant sound trees of proper sorts, and to give them the prescribed care. The result is not only a thing of beauty but one of practical utility as well.
There are many places where the owner of a city or suburban lot can secure the fun and the substantial benefits belonging to the fruit grower on land that would be otherwise wasted, if he will only build a woven wire fence on the property line between him and his not-too-agreeable neighbor, using this fence as a support for a row of cordon plums, pears or apples. If he has time and inclination to do a little more work with the trees he can better plant U-form peaches, nectarines or apricots, or he can grow plums in U-form, or he can have fan-form cherry trees, or apples or pears in Verrier-palmettes. One of the most interesting and productive lots in the author's dwarf fruit garden is a row of plum trees on such a woven wire trellis. The trees in this row stand two feet apart, and form a perfect screen. (Fig. 6.) The majority of the trees which were necessarily taken for planting this row were not propagated on suitable stocks, and many varieties were introduced for experimental purposes which were obviously unadapted to this mode of training, but nevertheless the net result has been highly satisfactory.