I've never done it but I'd love to espalier some fruit trees. Saw a great veggie garden in France with espaliered fruit trees about 1.5m apart and veggies in between - probably a dozen trees in all in a very small space, well, relatively small.
Before rushing off to buy trees, check out their pollination requirements. I think stone fruits are self-pollinating but most pome fruits (apples, pears etc) need pollinators.
BTW, have you checked out the Ausgarden forums?
Ray
PS I visited HDRA in the UK. Rather puts our lot to shame!

I have espaliered three apple trees of friendly pollination affinity. We use it as a garden divider and started off with young trees - selected for their potential shape - look for some with good lateral buds and prune out any unwanted branches so you get a 'flat' tree. Train the branches along wires. Ours are freestanding, not against a fence so they can be trained and pruned from both sides. They are now three years old and we have three levels of lateral branches and one leader upright. We'll probably tip prune this next year so we just have 4 levels. This is a common practise in apple orchards in Tassie and really does save space. I susoect peach would take a lot of training and they don;t like heavy pruning so it might be some time before you got a good shape. Pears should do well. I'll put a photo up on the ausgarden forum later this week. Cosmic

We have espaliered pears and an apricot. The pears work really well: I don't think varieties are important for pears, but ours are Beurre Bosc and Doyenne du Comice (delicious). We have four wires, the top one being about 2m up and the bottom about 600mm. The branches are horizontal. They are against a brick wall which faces north-west.

The apricot is a Moorpark and has been in about 4 years. It produces quite well and only has two strands of wire. The branches are at about 30 degrees off horizontal.

We have three freestanding apples (Jonathon, Granny and Lady Williams) about 1m away from each other, and they produce really well. They are about 17 years old.

We had a freestanding multigraft cherry (Rons Seedling and Burgsdorf) also of about 17 years old, and the Rons Seedling - unfortunately the best taster - died. We've now put in a new Rons Seedling and a Stella both about 1m from the Burgsdorf and are hoping that they will be able to compete with the older roots from the Burgsdorf.

We have a freestanding multigraft Greengage (mouthwatering!)/Coes Golden Drop. The Greengage didn't produce too well until we grafted a Prune d'Agen on, now all three do well - the prune bits get laden!

I'm really keen to try espaliering an avocado, and would love to hear if anyone has done this, or has advice!

I can vouch that Sugar Snap's espaliered pears are a sight to see, as is the rest of the garden. I visited a couple of weeks back and it is amazing how you can fit such a large tree in such a narrow area. One thing I noted with Helen's is that the wire is strained tight to give the best support and retain the true horizontal lines.

Re Avocado: I've never seen, nor heard of one being espaliered but I know they fruit in Melbourne. We found the first fruit on the weekend. I haven't seen my dad so excited in a while. They will need some protection from frost though. He simply has some shade cloth that he drapes over 4 posts during the frosty seasons. I'm told that when they get to about 7 or 8 yrs old they tolerate the frost. Not sure if it is because their canopy is large or they simply get tough.

for all inspiration and info the South Australian rare fruit web page
www.rarefruit-sa.org.au/Espalier/Espalier.htm

totally wonderful and any kind of fruit