They do grow in normal speed if you plant them this way. They do grow directly next to the fence/wall too, but will take almost a year instead of 28 days. I have several trees planted in both ways and two between the wall and the greenhouse (the last two having the almost a year growtime.) No idea about the planner but if a space is free next to a tree in any direction you can step into it, just your horse needs more space, so if you want to ride past, you need two free spaces between trees or any other solid objects.
You might try hoeing the spots around the tree and then take the pickax and remove the hoed land to ensure it's "clear"
I can see it's clear, but since they aren't growing the game might not think it's clear. By going through every square around the tree it might 'reset' and grow again. I just saw your other reply, now wait? From the looks it should only be another week or two until fully grown.
I think they were threatening it, and then it grew so they were like: .............should I do it anyway?!
You can't plant fruit trees in the first way at all. It tells you something like "Too close to another tree" if you try. At some point during the trees' growth there must have been something too close to them. This also includes grass that may have randomly grown there while you weren't looking. Said grass could also have been eaten by animals before you even knew it was there to begin with. It might of course be a bug, but when I planted over a dozen trees, they all finished growing on the exact same day.
