Gone are the days when fruit trees were only for those with sprawling orchards or oversized backyards. With Ballerina® apple trees, the magic of growing your own apples is now accessible to urban dwellers, renters, patio gardeners, and anyone with a sunny spot to plant something beautiful.  

Imagine a mini orchard on your balcony or a garden path lined with blossom in spring and fruit in autumn. Unlike espalier fruit trees, Ballerina apples naturally maintain their slender shape (30cm wide and 2.5m tall) with very little intervention. 

With their slim, upright growth habit and neatly vertical form, they are not only fruit bearers, but living architectural accents.They can stand like sentinels at a garden entrance, perhaps meeting at the top to form an arch. On a courtyard or patio they add height without hogging the living space. As a privacy screen they offer flowers and foliage while letting the sun though in winter. 

Ballerina apples were developed from a natural mutation that appeared on an English McIntosh apple. The genetic trait causes them to grow as a single pole with very short or non-existent side branches. This delivers a striking effect in the garden that is easy to maintain, simply because it is the natural way they grow. 

Without lateral branches, the fruit clusters close to the trunk, forming a fruiting column. Ballerina apples fruit prolifically at a very young age and will support an abundant harvest as early as two years after planting. They are self-fertile but will produce the most fruit when cross pollinated by another ballerina apple. While all are fairly disease hardy, including Ballerina apples (with other fruit trees or roses) ina basic spray programme helps keep them in peak health and productivity. 

Pruning, if needed at all, is minimal. Any larger side branches that grow are simply cut back to two buds in winter. Very little other care is required as long as the trees are planted in a sunny spot with fertile, free draining soil and plenty of summer watering to ensure the fruit reaches peak quality.  

Ballerina apple varieties

All are stunning in spring with showy white blossoms tinged with pink, followed by lush green foliage through summer.

• Bolero - shiny green eating apples that have a golden blush.
• Polka - red blushed fruit, with crisp, juicy, flavoursome flesh.
• Waltz - bright red fruit with crispy, juicy and tangy-flavoured flesh.
• Flamenco – bright red skin and crisp white flesh that's sweet with a refreshing tang.
• Maypole – a crabapple form with mass of stunning cerise pink blossoms in spring and bronze-green new foliage growth through the summer. The stem is loaded with bunches of bright red crabapples.

Winter is a good time to plant fruit trees, available from garden centres nationwide.

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