Fruit on a landscape plant is a different proposition from fruit on a fruit tree. Nobody is picking it, most of it is small or sour or strictly for the birds, and its whole value is what it does to the look of a planting and who it brings into the yard.
Done well it is one of the better tools available here. A crabapple holding red fruit through December, serviceberry in June, rose hips after the flowers are gone, currants, viburnum, sumac — these carry a planting through the months when there is nothing else to look at. In a climate with a four-month growing season and a five-month winter, fruit is one of very few things that works in the off months. It is also the most direct way to bring birds in, which is usually the point of a bird planting rather than the feeder.
The distinction that decides everything is whether the fruit holds or drops. Persistent fruit stays on the branch through winter, dries in place, and either feeds birds or simply looks good against snow. Dropping fruit hits the ground, ferments, stains, draws wasps, and turns a walk slick for a few weeks every fall. Two plants can be described identically on a tag and behave completely differently on this one point, and it is worth asking before anything goes in.
Which leads to the only hard rule on this page. Never plant anything that drops fruit over a patio, a walk, a drive, a parking area or anywhere people sit. The same crabapple that is a good decision in a border twenty feet away is a bad one over a seating area, and the difference shows up for a few weeks every autumn for the entire life of the tree. Check what is underneath before you check anything else.
One more thing worth knowing. A fruiting plant that birds like is a plant birds distribute, and a few of them have escaped into the drainages and fence lines around here that way. Anything introduced and heavily fruiting gets checked against the Colorado noxious weed list before it goes on a plan — a plant that thrives in this climate and spreads on its own is not an ornamental, it is somebody's future removal job.
If what you are actually after is fruit you intend to eat, that is a different set of questions entirely — bloom timing, pollination partners, rootstock, and a pruning and spray calendar. Fruit trees covers that side of it.
