Maiden Fruit Trees

What is a Maiden Fruit Tree?

Buying Maiden Fruit Trees: Browse our fruit tree catalogue: all trees are available as Maidens and most are also sold in larger sizes.

A maiden is a finger thick, single stemmed young tree, about 1 metre tall when it is delivered.

You can't grow new fruit trees of a particular variety from a seed. It doesn't work.
We have to take a cutting of new growth from an adult tree (a scion) and graft it onto the roots of a young tree (a rootstock).

One year after these have been grafted together, they will be joined firmly and you can plant them as a Maiden.

This means that the Maiden tree itself is only 1 year old, but the bits that made it were at least a year old before they were put together.
A Maiden is much bigger than a year old fruit tree grown from seed would be.

• If you want to grow a wire-trained fruit tree like a fan or an espalier, you must start with a maiden tree.
  

Our Advice:

• If you want to grow a restricted, wire trained fruit tree, you must use a maiden to start off with (except for cordons, we sell them ready made).
  
  
• If you want a large, free standing fruit tree, there isn't much point buying a maiden. You'll save money on the tree, but you'll spend that money ten times over buying fruit in the market while your little tree takes up to 5 years to begin cropping!
  Start with a bush sized tree if you want to save space or a half standard sized tree if you want a "proper" tree.