Start Your Own Backyard Orchard

Delicious Fruit

Few things that you can do in the garden are more satisfying than growing your own fruit. Nothing beats being able to pick a tree-ripened apple from your own backyard fruit tree. Fruit trees are the perfect landscape choice in many ways they produce gorgeous blossoms, foliage for shade on a summer day, tasty fruit and usually great fall color. Even in winter, the bare branches of most fruit trees provide interest in the landscape.   
Fruit Trees For Zone 8
Fruit trees are the perfect landscape choice in many ways they produce gorgeous blossoms, foliage for shade on a summer day, tasty fruit and usually great fall color. Even in winter, the bare branches of most fruit trees provide interest in the landscape. There’s no denying that the sweetest fruits are those picked off the tree at the peak of ripeness, whether it’s a juicy peach or plum, a crisp fall apple, or a soft pear. So it makes sense that if you love fruit, you’ll love having your own fruit tree or trees in your garden.  With the exception of citrus trees, these fruit trees thrive in the high level desert gardens Zone 8. Use this general roundup of popular fruit trees to gather ideas for your garden.

Apples

It’s hard to go wrong with an apple tree or two in your yard. Apples hold their flavor well both on the tree and once they’re harvested.

Plums

When it comes to versatility, plums give apples a run for their money. For a fruit tree, they’re surprisingly hardy.

Apricots

With an apricot tree, you don’t have to choose. These generally smallish trees have a great shape and unusual bark, lovely foliage and fruit that can’t be beat for its delicate flavor.

Cherries

Sweet or sour, cherries are near the top of the list of most people’s favorite fruits. The trees are also beautiful themselves, especially when blooming every spring.

Peaches & Nectarines

Peaches and nectarines are grouped together because nectarines are simply a fuzzless type of peach. There are varieties with white flesh and those with yellow flesh, and for some people that difference is major. You can have fruit from early summer into fall.

Pears

For home gardeners, pears fall into two categories: European and Asian. European pears are the familiar “pear-shaped” fruits that are an autumn staple. Asian pears, sometimes called apple pears, are round, fragrant fruits with a flavor that seems to explode in your mouth.

Citrus

If you can grow citrus, you’re in luck. First, you’ll have an evergreen tree with intensely fragrant blossoms and delicious fruit that can stay on the tree for long periods. Then, these are some of the most fuss-free and low-maintenance trees around.

Pomegranates

Starting in early summer, waxy orange-red flowers appear. Then the fruit gradually fattens and reddens by early fall, sometimes splitting open to reveal the glistening crimson edible seeds. All it takes is one fruit to make your effort worthwhile.