Hi,

Hopefully over the next couple of weeks I will become the owner of 2 new fig trees!

I have two places in mind for planting them which are quite different and I was looking for a bit of advice as to which would do best in which location.

The two varieties are Brunswick and White Marseilles (decided to avoid the run of the mill Brown Turkey!). I am in S London, England.

The two locations are:

A SW facing fence in the ground. It's heavy clay soil, but I'll be placing it in a 45l rooting bag with some John Innes #3. It should get a good amount of sun as it's a reasonable distance from the house (to the SE) and a mature magnolia tree (to the NW). This will be trained as a fan against the fence

In a pot on the patio, trained up against a SW facing wall. This tree will get less light as it's closer to other walls of the house and a couple of metres from a trellis but on the flip side it is also more sheltered. I will probably put it in a self-watering pot so the water situation is likely to be better than in the soil (which could get a bit waterlogged in a downpour), but on the other hand is more likely to dry out. The wall is an external staircase with an external cupboard underneath, so not much real heat from house to benefit from. I will try and train this tree against the wall but more vertically so it can get light shining over the trellis. I do not plan on moving this plant indoors over winter as I've nowhere to put it, but it's very rare to drop below -5C here (23F)

attempt at a diagram(!) - Up is NE, XX is proposed planting location and there is about 2m gap between the trellis and the staircase

    Staircase (1 floor)                   House
______________________|________________________
             XX                                                                         |
                                                                                          |     House (3 (modern) stories)
                                                                                          |
------------------------------------------------------------------------|
                                   trellis                                               |
                                                                                          |     House (2 (Victorian) stories)
                                                                                          |
                                                                                          |
                                     __________________________|
                                     |
                                     |

I was thinking of the Marseilles in the ground and the Brunswick in the pot, but that's mainly because the White Marseille was the original purchase and the Brunswick was an opportunistic buy and I thought I should seek a bit more educated advice first!