Many fruit trees can be espaliered. When you trim the branches, you need to coat the trunk and branches that aren't shaded by leaves with white or light colored latex paint diluted 50/50 with water. That will protect the exposed branches from sunburn. Dave Wilson nursery has a good website with lots of info for the home gardener on how to grow fruit trees. I don't work for them, but I heard one of their speakers and have gotten a lot of information from them - no tree yet, still trying to choose one.

What about an informal espalier of citrus trees to take advantage of that heat? Figs?

Painting of trunks and limbs isn't quite the 'look' I'm after. Here I was more worried about the fruit getting burnt.

I hadn't thought about figs. I love Niegra and Honey Figs, neither of which want to be huge plants. Citrus would be good too.

I will check out the Dave Wilson website before I give up on my idea.

Thanks!

The Master Gardener group in Fresno is having a class on espalier coming up. You could probably get information from them, too. The mission of Master Gardeners is to give information to the home gardener. You can get the scoop from gardeners who live near you to find out what has been successful for them.

Painting the trunk and limbs is only necessary for new trees and branches that are not shaded by the canopy of the tree.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fresno Master Gardeners

Thank you for the link. I've attended a number of their classes in the past. I'll check on this one.

Well, I checked on the class and it's only on pruning, something I do know how to do, so I guess I'll skip this one. If you hear of anything else please let me know.