Customer Reviews
An excellent guide to growing fruit by the RHS - By: Dr. Richard J. Pickard, 15 Jan 2006 
I have found this to be an invaluable book which I have used together with the Fruit Expert by Dr Hessayon. The latter isin full colour & is probably a superior guide to choosing your fruit trees & bushes with descriptions, colour pictures & ratings of lots of varieties. The RHS book is aimed at the planting, pruning & care of your fruits once chosen (although it does have short descriptions of the more popular varieties but no pictures of them). This book isin black & white & one other colour but this doesn't really detract from the numerous beatiful drawings. It has comprehensive detail with illustrations on planting & long term care of your fruit trees/ bushes. In particular it has illustrations of pruning for each fruit & each year of growth of that fruitin each of the growing styles available (eg illustrations of how to prune maiden, 2yr, 3yr, 4yr old trees, cordons, fans, pyramids, espaliers for apples with different illustrations for each fruit covered). This scores significantly over the fruit expert book which is much more limitedin this regard with very generalised pruning techniques which you have to try & extrapolate to different types of fruit & different years of growth.
In summary an excellent book once you have chosen which variety to plant.
The first book to own if you want to grow fruit in yourself. - By: hughes.d@bhwg.com, 09 May 2000 The book is very well presented, with good pictures, photographs & text. Included are all the old favorites plus quite a few unusual or exotic fruits. The RHS get top marks for providing all the information that you will need to successfully grow fruit & presenting itin a very easy to understand way. Whether you are a beginner or a dedicated horticulturalist this book is definately one for the potting shed.
