Sold Out!

The Arboreum Company has been a small and personal enterprise in the penumbra of world commerce … we were unprepared for the instantaneous transition from obscurity to notoriety that modern journalism is capable of doing!

The result is that all the fruit trees that we had intended to last us three months of e-sales were gone in three days. Yes, we have no more trees. Any orders that we receive (which are necessarily not processed through our website) must be returned with our thanks for your show of interest and support for our cause: The Finest Fruits You Can Grow.

As a consolation for those who came too late to the party, we post here the images and descriptions of all the varieties of all the fruits we have offered during the past two years. Some, perhaps most, will be available again next season. Watch this space! This site shall post the varieties actually available next season after Labor Day, and at that time again be able to receive your orders. But remember, it’s first come, first served … and we will not hold trees or await your payment indefinitely.

Your inquiries, if of a general interest, should be posted at our blog — just click the blog button above. If submitted at the blog, our response will be more inclusive and informative.

We offer dozens of varieties of bareroot fruit trees not available anywhere else.

Available to you this season from our nurseries:

Cherries

Beloved as the first fruits of the season, cherries have resisted the market trend to make every fruit a year-long commodity. Cherry breeders and marketers have found in the fruit's genes no way to extend the cherry season beyond the brief, but spectacular, bliss of late spring. The best way to make the most of the season is to grow your own! Ours is the only nursery to offer the finest cherries. You will want to plant more than one variety, and that will provide the pollination these finest eating cherries require. There are two things you can do to demonstrate that garden cherries are worthwhile: 1. Head Low: cut the newly-planted cherry off at no more than a foot above ground and encourage low multiple branches with each pruning. This makes the tree shorter and easier to net against birds. 2. Apply Tanglefoot: to trunk 6 inches above ground and keep it freshly disturbed. Aphids are the worst enemy of garden cherries and are introduced and re-introduced by ants. Keep the ants from entering the tree with a fresh band of tanglefoot.

Apricots

These golden fruits seem the quintessential Californian fruit, beautiful on tree or on plate, so aromatic and flavorful, and so ill adapted are they to conditions in the rest of the world. No other fruit is nearly a lost art form. as the traditional varieties are no longer grown and modern ones unsatisfactory, that the apricot may soon vanish from commerce. The only way to be assured of the genuine article is to grow it one's self. We offer three traditional Californian cultivars and also three from abroad, to introduce our public to white apricots and an even greater range of apricot experience. As suburban areas grow ever warmer in winter, home growers discover that apricots are sensitive to insufficient winter chill, which causes late winter bud drop. Note the necessary chill for each variety.

Plumcots

Improbable hybrids between Plum and Apricot, Plumcots may resemble plums, with a smooth skin and clingstone, white, juicy flesh, or apricots' fuzzy skin and yellow freestone fruits. When Luther Burbank publicized his first plumcot hybrids, "professional" pomologists denounced them as a hoax. Burbank was vindicated later, but meanwhile his reputation had been unjustly damaged by pomologists who lived in inclement climates and had no experience with either Asian plum or apricot breeding. It was later demonstrated that plumcots had arisen centuries ago naturally, hybrids between apricot and cherry-plums (Prunus cerasifera). We offer one of this type. Currently, many fruit breeders are popularizing hybrids between apricots and Asian plums. All true plumcots are scanty bearers if lacking appropriate pollenizers nearby, and are very sensitive to insufficient winter chilling.

Asian Plums

Wonderfully versatile fruits, these plums originated in East Asia and were introduced to Japan, and then to California in the 1870s, and from here to the rest of the world. Today, most fresh plums in commerce are of the Asian type and are varieties that originated in California. Usually clingstone, the Asian Plums progress as they ripen from firm, dry and dense to veritable sacks of juice, so should be picked and refrigerated at the stage you prefer. Varying in flavor, many retain a tartness that makes them usable in any cooked form - jellies, jams, cobblers, curd; try blood plum pie! They need no peeling. Are generally improved in bearing by planting more than one, though most of those offered are partially self-fertile.

Peaches

The tree-ripened peach compresses within its skin the distilled essence of summer, and for that there is no substitute in the experience of the season. Cherries may mark the turn of spring, but without at least four peach trees, there can be no early summer, no midsummer, no late summer, not even a summer turning into fall ... you came here seeking one essential peach tree, and now you're planning an orchard! Truly, each of the varieties offered are the finest of their kind and season and one taste of any of them would justify their place in your garden. All are freestone, unless noted. Chill hours are suggestive only and are not determinative in every season.

Nectarines

More than a Peach, not less, is the Nectarine. It does lack a peach's skin, but in its best representatives, has an aroma and flavor that no peach can approach. The rich, complex fragrance of a true nectarine is almost impossible to describe to the uninitiated, but it is real, and somehow connected with the glabrous skin of the "slick peach." Yet a nectarine tree may produce an occasional branch of peaches, or even of fruits that are half nectarine, half peach, and the flesh will change in aroma accordingly! Nectarines are self-fruitful and require the same considerations as peaches, but are peculiarly sensitive to brown rot and cannot well be ripened where rains are usual during summer.

European Plums

Without a doubt the sweetest of all the temperate fruits, the European plums include gages, prunes, mirabelles and tart fruits used only for cooking: damsons, bullaces and sloes. All are more or less freestone, fleshy, firm and never watery. The gages are particularly renowned dessert fruits with a characteristic flavor resembling the best apricots, but are now little known or grown on this country. Rarely self fertile, plant two for proper pollination.