Angelique: There are no rules for spacing fruit trees. Ignore what it says on the label and space them however you need, which goes for all fruits. You ought to see how modern commercial apple orchards cram in the trees, and triple the yields of the old "big tree, large spacing" orchards. I keep three seedling rootstock (standard size) apple trees espaliered and spaced three feet apart, and they are way less trouble to maintain than the mini-dwarf and dwarf trees I have. A Jacaranda branch fell and whacked one of the mini-dwarfs, breaking a couple branches off. It'll be two years until it grows back to normal. The standard would sprout a new branch in no time. I prune the standard trees twice during the summer, which is enough to keep them behaved. Your key to success is summer pruning. Pruning in the winter just perks them up; it's summer pruning that sucks the vigor out of them and keeps them tamed.

I would grow a gooseberry or currant. They are a bush and can be fan pruned. They will fruit less in the shade but will produce tasty fruits. My favorite is the Poorman gooseberry. It is not very productive in the shade but the taste is excellent when left to hang to be a dull purple. Pawpaws are one other option, they are natural shade trees. The production will be limited in the shade but I am fine with limited production since I can't eat too many of them. I tried several other fruits in the shade and did not get good results. Scott

I agree with Gary's recommendation. I have a North Star cherry that I espaliered and it looked great that way until our neighbor's soft maple shed a limb and wiped out one whole side of my creation. Since then, I've let it grow to a more natural shape. Excellent pie cherry! I also have a dwarf Haralson apple espaliered. If you're getting a full-size variety (larger than the cherries) of some kind, I'd recommend the dwarfing rootstock. Keeping growth in check becomes a challenge once the tree becomes established. Give it a shot. If I had more room, I'd try plums and apricots.

We have a pear that's about 8 years old. It's against an East-facing wall. It came as a 3-in-1 but only the Bartlett has ever given fruit (the other two were D'Anjou and Flemish Beauty). So we've had the added challenge of trying to re-train the Bartlett branch over to the areas where we initially trained the others! I'm hoping to install an apple, but we have limited space and I don't want two so need a self-fertile one...given our experience with the pear I'm not too hot on a multi-grafted plant.