Down here that bare wood is from lack of chilling. Maybe yours is from excessive chilling, just kidding. I'm no espalier expert. But maybe you need to prune back more to get those lower buds to break. It's probably too late now. But in the dormant season if you had shortened those branches by half the would be less bare wood. Then you do the same each year to force fuller budding.

You could just bring it into the house near a south facing window for them winter. Its not going to fruit for several years so the period of dormantcy isn't important yet anyways. One a side note, I've found that to be a tough tree to grow in NC. The deer go for its leaves before anything else. Mine are down to their roots and if I can get them started again, I plan to leave them in pots on the screened porch until I can train them to a single stem about 5ft tall. Once they clear the deer's reach I'll put them back in ground.

I figured out how some of the plants got lifted. I pulled a chamaecyparis out of the ground today. It was ugly... got lifted... most of it was brown. I never really cared to look at this thing. Anyhow, the ground around this plant was frozen. Inside the planting hole was a cup of water. You could literally put your hand down into the water and feel the ice on the rim and bottom of the hole. The ground is frozen, the plant is warm enough to melt the ice which filled the hole with water. that's surprising in that particular location because it's on a slight hill. I don't think my clay was the issue here. Out in the field it drains well... even after a hard rain you can walk on it hours later and you won't get your feet wet. The snow melted a week ago and it's been good the last week with no wet weather. But the field remains soggy. I got my shovel out and went poking around. In spots you cant dig anymore than 3-4" deep because the ground is frozen causing the water to sit on top. There are spots in my field where I have puddles which is very unusual. The shovel can't even break the ground in these spots. I took another look at the two pungens I planted last October and they are browning up pretty fast. I'm going to consider those gone, even though they have green buds. I don't know if these pungens are sitting in a bowl of water or not... but I'm not going to pull them out of the ground to see just in case. I tried digging down the side of one just to see, but it was frozen solid. All my older plants look to be ok... It looks like I'm going to only be planting in spring and praying that the first winter for these plants will be mild. Once the roots get into the surrounding soil they will be ok, it's just a matter of getting them established and through the first winter so this won't happen again.

This has been a strange Spring. The days are warm enough to expect shrubs and perennials to be breaking dormancy, but very few are. I just made my garden tour "inspection" this afternoon and found tiny leaves swelling on my roses, lilacs, and hydrangeas, but the fruit trees are still sleeping. Half my newly planted rhododendrons and Blue Prince Holly look as if they didn't survive the winter, but my wisteria does have some swollen buds. Two of my six peonies have tiny red shoots piercing through the surface. The poison ivy, on the other hand, is bursting through the soil. April is indeed the cruelest month!