Recommendations for growing pears and figs?

[dtw]

I bought small pear tree from Wilco's, it's a single stalk with the pears growing off that, instead of the more traditional tree shaped pear tree!
I don't know the variety, as I've thrown the box away already.

I bought a fig tree too.

What is the best way to grow these, in terms of preparing the ground and position?

[dtw]

[jennym]

Full sun is best for both.
With figs, it is said that constraining the roots helps them to fruit and people talk about putting slabs in the ground before planting. Have seen figs fruiting very well without this though. Mine is in a very large plastic pot with the bottom cut out, and the pot is sunk into the ground, it does fine. It's against the shed and faces south so it gets shelter and warmth and something to support it, as they can be a bit lax. Too much high nitrogen compost dug in around them encourages lots of shoot growth, which may be fine in the early days but may not be what you want later on.
Pears are usually grown as free standing trees, but you might want to put a stake in, I haven't with all mine and they do ok. When I planted, I dug out a hole about 3 ft diameter, and deep enough so that the level of the soil would be at the same level as the tree was originally grown in. Mixed in a a couple of shovelfulls of well rotted horse manure with the soil dug out, put the tree in and replaced the soil, firming it well around the tree. Grow mine as espaliers between posts and wire, but that's because of lack of space, if I had more room I'd grow them as bush form trees. Sounds like yours may have been trained as a cordon form, or it may be very young and just not have many branches yet. If you want to let it develop branches, it will if you feed it and don't cut off what develops.
Here's a good clear picture of several trees trained as cordons diagonally against a wall at Audley End gardens:

[Robert_Brenchley]

I had a pear that did that the first year. As it grew branches, it grew them on those.