attractive fruits

[gan heather]

As I explained in this thread
I need to find some type of plant(s) to put in 2 very large containers in a playground. One thing I'm considering is some type of fruit tree/bush. It shouldn't get too tall (not more than 5 feet) or too bushy and should be safe around children (no thorns, etc). An added bonus would be if it looked good all year (such as attractive bark in winter). I've thought of maybe some blueberry bushes (I've read they have silvery bark which looks nice in the winter, but I'm not sure if that's true) or a crab apple tree (though I don't think it looks especially nice in winter).

Any suggestions?

[chrisguk]

Im quite fond of the blueberries winter appearance, it goes a nice red flush in autumn that lasts until spring. The flowers in spring are nice looking, and the good part is that the fruit is edible, so rather than any kids munching on any attractively poisonous berries, they'll get full of antioxidants!

[Two_Sheds]

I have a twisted willow in a pot, it's 7ft tall, or there's a twisted (corkscrew) hazel: BBC - Gardening: Plant Finder - Corkscrew hazel

[FB.]

Blueberries indeed turn an attractive red in the winter.
Personally, I don't find the flowers attractive to look at, but that's personal preference.
My main concern about blueberries is that they dislike drying out (always a risk with a pot-grown plant) and blueberries prefer acidic soil.
I think that blueberries would soon suffer from neglect (lack of water).

I think that some of the ancient fruit varieties are what gave our ancestors the idea for Christmas decorations - colourful balls hanging on the trees.
Why not look for a fruit tree that hangs onto its fruit well into the new year. The fruits are colourful and they can be a valuable food source for birds during the winter - and the birds would give some interest to the children.

On the front lawn of my old house was a crab apple tree (planted by the previous owners, so I have no idea of the variety). The small orange-red fruits hung on all through winter.
In late winter the fruits would have softened and gone a bit of a funny colour, but at that time they would be eaten by the birds.

With good choice of rootstock, or by chosing slower-growing/compact varieties, or with good pruning, you could keep a crab apple (or other fruit tree) in a pot.
I'd stay away from stone fruits (cherries/plums etc) in case someone chokes on a pip.

[gan heather]

With good choice of rootstock, or by chosing slower-growing/compact varieties, or with good pruning, you could keep a crab apple (or other fruit tree) in a pot.
I'd stay away from stone fruits (cherries/plums etc) in case someone chokes on a pip.

Would something like this or this be suitable? I think it would be a nice idea, but how big would it be likely to get in a pot (I'm worried about it getting too big)?

[FB.]

Perhaps MM106 is a little vigorous for a 5-6ft tree in a container, although with regular summer pruning and not too much feeding, you could probably keep it quite small.
A plus point of MM106 is that it is a lot more tolerant of neglect than the dwarfing rootstocks and will recover fairly quickly from damage or stress (such as a broken branch of forgotten watering). MM106 also has resistance to woolly aphid, which can be an unsightly pest of apples trees.

If the tree is an ornamental (which crab apples fall into), it will have been bred for its looks and may not have much disease resistance, so the fruits might end up splitting and rotting after fungal attack.

One notably disease-resistant crab apple is Malus Floribunda, which has been crossed with a number of disease-prone eating apples, to bring disease resistance into the genes of modern apple varieties.
Due to over-use of its resistance genes, there are now some strains of fungi that can break through M.floribunda's resistance (a bit like MRSA evolved to break through antibiotics). However, I would not expect a lone tree to be too badly affected - and it will still resist most of the common strains of disease; just not the super-strains.