Pruning an espalier tree? Choose the right scaffold.

Espaliers are rarely planted in the middle of a lawn. They fill the strip between a terrace and the boundary, or they screen a side elevation with a metre or so of room in front. The Altrex RS51 fits that strip, since it builds up only 75 cm wide and therefore passes between the training frame and a path or fence. The other versions in the mobile scaffold hire range are wider and almost always lose that narrow gap to this model.

What you need up top differs from facade work. There is no bucket on your deck, but there is a pair of loppers beside you, a pruning saw hanging off the guardrail and a branch growing over your platform. With 245 cm of platform length you have room to move along a trunk without rolling on each time, and the 75 cm depth turns out to be just enough to stand next to your prunings instead of on them. You need not fill the deck with materials anyway.

The wider RS52 at 135 cm comes into the picture when two people work the same crown at once, or when heavy main limbs have to be lowered rather than dropped. For ordinary maintenance on an espalier that is overkill, certainly where the trees stand in a row and you shift often. Weigh in as well that every extra part is one more you carry through the garden and bring back to the stack by the gate afterwards.

On an espalier the highest point is hardly ever the gutter, but the topmost trained branch plus the shoots that have run above it this season. For a tree trained up to roughly first floor level you come out at 6 to 8 metres. Your deck then hangs between 4 and 6 metres, since your arms add roughly another 2 metres of reach on top of the platform height. If you are unsure, look at what a facade of two storeys asks for in practice and book slightly generously.

Take as your zero point the spot where the wheels will end up and not the terrace next to the tree. Espaliers stand strikingly often in a sunken border, behind a low retaining wall or at the foot of a bank, and that easily costs half a metre of reach. Measure horizontally as well: you stand some way off the trunk, so you reach up at an angle rather than straight. That slanting line costs you height you have to win back in the build.

Choose too low and you cut the top shoots with your arms stretched above your head, while thin branches scrape past your face and shoulders. You then cut too short or too far from the bud, and you see that in the shape of the tree all season. On top of that the trimmings drop straight down when you cut, towards you and your tools. Which build is usual here you can see at eight metres of reach.

This is where the job parts company with pruning growth on the wall itself. With planting trained against the brickwork you push the scaffold right up to the masonry. Here you cannot, because between you and the facade sits a frame of wires carrying the very branches you want to spare. Your build therefore goes on the garden side, clear of the tree, with the crown within arm's reach but your wheels well outside the structure itself.

That free-standing character makes the ground important. Under an espalier there is seldom paving: it is grass, bark, a border or a strip of gravel that gives after rain. Put a plank or a spreader plate under every wheel so the build does not sink slowly into the ground while you are up top. Then check that all four stabilisers really make contact. A root running just below the surface can push one of them slightly up, and you feel that at once from the platform.

Finally walk the perimeter for anything in the way. On espaliers those are fixed things: the posts of the training frame itself, a wire that starts low down, a border of perennials, sometimes a garden light on a spike. The stabilisers want free space on every side, so take away what can go and mark what stays. On pruning day that saves you half an hour of levering and shoving with a tower that is already standing in the border.

A single espalier is a matter of hours. It is the rows that take time: four or five trees along a drive means climbing down, rolling on, folding out stabilisers and climbing back up just as many times. Clearing up comes on top, because prunings take more room than you think and often still have to go to the bin or the trailer. For a row of four to six trees you hire two days in practice, for one tree a single day usually does.

The time of year decides the rest. Winter pruning wants a frost-free, dry day, and such days do not always fall on the date that suits you best. Summer pruning of the shoots can be done almost any time, but not in much wind, because then the branches blow out of your cut and you work inaccurately. So keep a margin instead of booking exactly two days, certainly when you want to start in January or February.

Financially that margin is light. Of the whole period only the first 24 hours carry the full rate; leave the mobile scaffold standing a day longer after that and you pay 95% less for it. A spare day for frost or a gale therefore barely touches the rental price, while planning too tight forces you to leave half-pruned trees behind. Booking a generous period costs far less here than hiring a second time. Hiring by the day or by the week sets out how that works.

Work by tree and not by height. Stand on the top position, finish the top shoots and the highest trained branch there completely, and drop down a level only when that side is done. Working like this you keep an eye on the shape and never prune the same plane twice. With 245 cm of deck you usually stand across the full width of a pollarded crown, so you can work from left to right without touching the tower. Only at the next trunk do you move the whole build.

Look before you cut at where the branch will land. On facade work everything falls down along the wall; here it falls through the crown onto the spot where your stabilisers stand. A thick branch landing on a splayed foot can shift it. So lower heavy pieces rather than dropping them, and clear up as you go once the heap reaches the wheels. Then you do not have to wade through a pile of timber at the end of the day.

Take up in one trip what you use aloft: loppers, a pruning saw, a length of twine for tying branches in and wound paint if you use it. Climbing with a saw in your hand is exactly where it goes wrong, so haul your things up in a bucket or a bag on a line. Anyone who also wants to trim back a climbing plant on the same day should reckon on a completely different build, much closer to the facade than this one.

You do not get a ready-made tower but a counted package of tubes, couplings and deck boards. Pick a spot for it that is not in your working area: the drive, the terrace or a corner of the lawn, and in any case not the strip under the espaliers where the prunings will end up. Order in time on a weekday, so before 15:00, and the set is on your garden path the next working day and you can start straight away.

You name the arrival date yourself, and the date the set leaves again as well. On pruning work that is welcome, because only a few days ahead do you see whether it will be frost-free and still. Have it delivered the day before you begin and you can build up calmly without hurrying. Building up is your work: two people, the manual to hand and the video on your phone. The order is also written out in the step by step for building up.

Once the trees are done you dismantle the build and lay all the parts where the driver can get at them; we take them away again. Do not do that in the middle of the heap of prunings, because branches between the tubes make counting up needlessly hard and that is how a coupling or a brace disappears into the greenery. The price of the run to your province is on the page of delivery costs, VAT included and with nothing added afterwards.

Under EN 1004 a tower like this counts as load class 3, which means 200 kg on each square metre. You plus your tools sit far below that, but a bundle of sawn branches you lay down for a moment does count, and so does a second person. So do not put heavy timber on your deck but pass it down. And as always: wheels braked before you climb on, never roll with anyone or anything aboard, and down you go once it really starts to blow.

What plays extra here is that the tree is not a bearing point. A trained branch feels solid and sits at exactly the right height to grab hold of, but it is not designed for your weight and snaps at a wrong movement. So never pull on it to draw the build towards you. Rather shift once more and keep your arms inside the guardrails; an espalier forgives a great deal, but a broken main limb does not simply grow back.

Finally, watch what happens below you. Prunings, a dropped pair of loppers or a loose branch all end up in the zone around the foot, exactly where children or a dog like to come and look. Fence that zone off or send them indoors before you climb on. Wet leaves on a platform are every bit as slippery as paint, so sweep your deck as you go. The further agreements are at working at height in practice.