Backyards, Beware: An Orchard Wants Your Spot

In the last few years, an increasing number of Americans have turned their yards over to such mini orchards, planting them with dwarf and semi-dwarf fruit trees, even in dense urban areas. Suppliers around the country have seen significant increases in fruit tree sales, like the 12 to 15 percent annual sales growth reported by the Dave Wilson Nursery in Hickman, Calif., which has one of the country’s largest selection of fruit trees (more than 1,300 varieties).

The backyard orchard makes sense, given the growing popularity of the local-food movement. Nothing is more local than the backyard, after all, and home orcharding, as the practice is sometimes called, guarantees freshness and cuts the energy costs for transportation to nil. Anxieties about food safety — sparked by events like last year’s E. coli outbreak in spinach — may also be contributing to the trend.

And once people decide to grow fruit, “it’s rare that they buy just one tree,” said Tom Shafer, the manager of Holdridge Home and Garden Showplace, a retail nursery in Ledyard, Conn. Mr. Shafer said the average number of trees his customers plant is four, but in the past three years some have been opting for a dozen or more. “People want more fruit and more types of fruit,” he said, “and they think a grouping will look better in their landscape.”

Since he bought his place four years ago, Mr. Grunsfeld has transformed his 150-square-foot garden into a little orchard, cramming it with fruit trees along with fruit-bearing vines and bushes. He has two cherry trees and two apples, including a Cox’s Orange Pippin in a planter (“I used to eat them in England”). There’s also a Santa Rosa plum (“I saw it in a nursery and couldn’t resist”); and a Concord grapevine in a tall frame in a barrel on a tree stump (“I don’t have an inch of space left so I’m trying to make it grow vertical”).

Three varieties of blackberries grow behind his children’s swing set, a fig tree occupies a far corner, and a litchi and two tangerine trees, part of a recent foray into citrus, wait for spring in a basement grow-room.

In the summertime, when everything is in bloom and fruiting, the yard calls to mind a scruffy Garden of Eden. “My wife thinks I’ve gone crazy,” Mr. Grunsfeld said, “but there’s something magical about seeing fruit develop.”