Please help with some ideas on designing my fruit garden

[Principia]

I have been collecting some fruit bushes for the last two years and they are all potted up and doing quite well (except my poor aphid infested gooseberry - it looks quite stunted and poorly compared to the other three but several nights of deaphiding and it seems to be relatively free so hopefully will recover).

I have:
4 gooseberry bushes
2 white currant bushes
2 red currant bushes
2 x3sticks autumn bliss raspberries
1 x3 summer fruiting raspberries

All of small but sprouting nicely - the gooseberries are in their second year but everything else was this year from Aldi (the autumn bliss, I'm embarrassed to admit, was ordered last year but delivered at the beginning of the snowy period so were stored out in the garage and then forgotten until I came across them in March)

My problem is that I have a teeny tiny front garden (open plan) that I would like to convert from an eyesore into a decorative fruit garden.

The dimensions are (it is quadrilateral in shape):

Front nearest house (we're a semi detached): 5.18m
Left side looking from house (unattached part of house so by path): 3.09m
Side furthest away from house: 5.63m
Right side attached to next doors front garden: 6.7m

Ideally I would like to create some kind of border between ourselves and next door and split the lawn (more accurately weedy, ant infested scrubland) into three vertically from the house (using a wavey edging) with the two edges planted up with fruit bushes (and heavily mulched - we have a cat problem,I love cats but hate their poo ) and the middle as a decorative strip of really nice lawn (this third will also contain the hanging bird feeder - in the hope the little birds will want some protein with their seed - I'd like to have a small circle (of the same edging) around the feeder and grow poppies and other wild flowers there to encourage the bees but perhaps another plants like lavender would be better?).

I think I have too many bushes to plant up in the space I have though - I have read that the red and white currants and the gooseberries need to be spaced 5ft (or 1.5m)apart, so I can only plant 4 bushes one side and two on the other? I don't want to overcrowd but it seems a lot of space, especially for the gooseberries.

Can I prune the bushes to keep them small without affecting fruit production? Or does anyone have any better ideas on how to utilise my space? Or am I being a bit ambitious for the size of my garden

Thanks

[Two_Sheds]

My neighbour's gooseberries are 3 ft wide at the mo and they're not fully grown yet. You could prune them as standards (lollipops) if you wanted, or even closer together as cordons: Gooseberries / RHS Gardening

Mother's redcurrant bushes are enormous: 4ft tall and wide last year. She's trained them up a fence

[purplekat]

Gooseberries, red and whitecurrants can all also be grown as cordons (a single stem) and can the be planted 12 - 18" apart. Obviously you'd get less fruit than a fully grown bush but you should still get a decent amount. They would need either staking or growing against some wires/fence/wall

Goosberry Training and Growing Tips | Gardeners Tips

[johnmcrin]

I think you need a mixture of bushes, maybe some flowering ones like rhododendrons, otherwise it looks bland. Plant a fruit tree or two; there is something homely about having trees that produce fruit. As to the lawn, a couple of guinea pigs will keep that down and still want their regular meals, they also make nice pets.

[sugar]

I grow my raspberries in hedges.

Gooseberries , white and red currants are also grown in hedges (triple cordons)

[Peas'n'Kews]

I think you need a mixture of bushes, maybe some flowering ones like rhododendrons, otherwise it looks bland. Plant a fruit tree or two; there is something homely about having trees that produce fruit. As to the lawn, a couple of guinea pigs will keep that down and still want their regular meals, they also make nice pets.

Sorry johnmcrin, but NO, NO, NO to rhododendrons!!!

NOTHING grows underneath them - they poision everything with the sticky stuff they excrete, plus as they like acidic soil, they may not be compatible with your fruit trees.

But that said, I do agree with johnmcrin that some other all-year round shrubs would add interest and structure.

Sorry, rant over

[zazen999]

Sorry johnmcrin, but NO, NO, NO to rhododendrons!!!

NOTHING grows underneath them - they poision everything with the sticky stuff they excrete, plus as they like acidic soil, they may not be compatible with your fruit trees.

But that said, I do agree with johnmcrin that some other all-year round shrubs would add interest and structure.

Sorry, rant over

John wasn't posting to give advice - he was posting to advertise in his signature. Now removed.

[Tadpole123]

Sorry johnmcrin, but NO, NO, NO to rhododendrons!!!

NOTHING grows underneath them - they poision everything with the sticky stuff they excrete, plus as they like acidic soil, they may not be compatible with your fruit trees.

Raspberries do.
Mine grow under, through, and around my rhododendron which somehow lives in my clay soil with no problem at all. Can't stop them wandering off that way every year.