Take a look at Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, and Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier. These are about designing integrated landscapes with a diversity of useful plants (fruit and nut trees, shrubs, edible perennials). If you're not familiar with permaculture and forest gardening ideas, will show you a different way of thinking about designing your landscape. It may not be for everyone, but it's a great way to utilize space.

Alex

I don't know. But think about if you want some chickens, bees or goats mixed into the plan.

Put in a mixed orchard of *disease resistant* apples, asian pears, maxine pears, jap plums, Redhaven peaches. Possibly some nectarines, seckel pears and persimmons.

Plant some brambles such as Heritage, Anne, Caroline, Autumn Brtiton, Kiwi gold. Triple crown Blackberry.

...and go heavy on the asian pears. They don't fool around. They produce and are hardy.

Thanks for the advice. I'll request the books from my library and start reading and planning.

I've been checking out the other threads for best plants for my area and best sources. Sounds like mailorder unless I want to do a road trip.

You can grow a lot of fruit on an acre.

You must decide whether you want to plant a gorgeous garden that produces food, or whether you want to plant a very easy care garden that produces food.

It's a lot less work to plant your orchard trees in rows, the right distance to mow between them, with drip lines to water them. To me, that looks beautiful, but it is not an English Cottage garden.

Your life will be much easier if you install correct fencing to keep out wildlife. Again, while I think it looks nice, it isn't a white picket fence.

My son just put in a berry patch that has a 8 foot fence and frame work on the top to cover the entire thing with bird netting when the fruit starts to get ripe. It is going to be so much easier to gather an entire crop of berries than trying to deal with individual netting over individual bushes.

Raised beds for small veggies and for strawberries save a lot of backbreaking (or knee wracking) work at ground level.

I just took a glance at a forum here called portager gardening. It looked like a lot of those people are growing food plants in a very beautifully designed landscaped gardens. Very impressive. But it looks like a lot of work.

Lee Reich, New Paltz, NY, has a book 'Landscaping with fruit'. Who just wants rows of trees in their backyard.

Here is a link that might be useful: Landscaping with Fruit

dian57-
When I started a few years ago, I had someone from the local Agricultural Extension Office come out and talk with me. It was a free service, like a tax benefit.
The next thing I did was test the soil to see what I would be working with. This is also a free service through our local ag office. The test results were very professional and they were available to discuss the results with me.

If you want a lot of fruit trees, consider growing them on a trellis. I wish someone had told me how attractive this method is and how easy it makes maintenance. I would have grown them all on the trellis if I had known. Now, my trellis grown apples are my favorite part of the orchard. You can fit a lot of fruit trees this way. And if you're like me, when you get started - you'll like it a lot and want to keep adding trees.