Which fruit will grow in a shady garden?

Shade is not one thing. Four hours of direct sun with open sky is a different proposition from permanent gloom under a sycamore, and a cool north-facing wall with clear sky above it is different again — plenty of light, no direct sun, and no risk of blossom being warmed into flower too early. Sorting out which you have decides what is worth planting.

Step by step

1. Work out how much direct sun the spot gets in June.Check morning, midday and late afternoon. Under four hours is deep shade; four to six is part shade, where the fruits below work; over six is effectively sun.
2. Distinguish shade from dry shade under a tree.Fruit under an established tree competes for water and nutrients as well as light, and almost nothing crops there. That is a soil problem as much as a light problem.
3. Use a north wall deliberately, not apologetically.A north-facing wall is bright, cool and frost-safe: blossom opens later, so it dodges frosts that catch a south wall. Morello and other acid cherries, cooking apples such as Bramley or Lane's Prince Albert, and redcurrants are all traditional north-wall fruit.
4. Choose cooking fruit over dessert fruit in shade.A cooking apple is meant to be sharp, so the sugar it fails to make in shade matters much less. The same logic makes gooseberries for cooking, blackcurrants and rhubarb sensible shade crops.
5. Accept later ripening and plan for it.Fruit in shade ripens one to three weeks later than the same variety in sun, which matters for late apples and outdoor grapes that are already racing the autumn.
6. Expect more disease pressure and space accordingly.Shade means slower drying after rain, so scab, mildew and botrytis are all more likely. Plant further apart than the book says, prune to keep the centre open, and clear fallen leaves.
7. Do not plant the fruits that will simply fail.Dessert apples become woolly and bland, pears barely ripen, plums and gages crop lightly, strawberries go watery, figs and grapes will not ripen, and peaches and apricots are a waste of a plant.
8. Consider improving the light before choosing the plant.Thinning the canopy of a neighbouring tree, painting a wall white or removing a fence panel for a trellis can move a spot from four hours of sun to six, which changes what is possible.

Tips

• Morello and other acid cherries fruit on last year's growth, unlike sweet cherries, so they are pruned differently — take out some older wood each summer to keep young shoots coming.
• Rhubarb is genuinely happy in part shade and is one of the very few crops that is.
• Autumn-fruiting raspberries in shade often fail to ripen the last of the crop before the frosts; summer-fruiting types are the better choice.
• Wild strawberries (alpine types) tolerate shade far better than cultivated ones, though the crop is small.

Common mistakes

• Assuming any fruit will 'do its best' in shade — Some fruits produce a smaller crop in shade; others produce nothing usable at all. A shaded peach is not a smaller peach harvest, it is no peach harvest and a diseased plant.
• Planting fruit under an established tree — Root competition for water and nutrients does more damage than the shade. If it must go there, use a large container standing on the ground instead.

Alternatives

• Grow in containers and move them: A potted fig, cherry or strawberry can spend the summer in the sunniest place you have, even if that is a doorstep or a front path, and be moved out of the way afterwards.
• Use the sunny vertical space instead: A single sunny fence panel takes three cordons. Vertical sun is often available in gardens where ground-level sun is not.
• Grow soft fruit rather than tree fruit: Gooseberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants and blackberries return far more per hour of sunlight than an apple tree does, and are the sensible fallback in a genuinely shady garden.

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