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As I write, with the rain lashing down outside and not a break in the sky to suggest it will ever stop, I am conjuring sunshine. A last few days or even hours to help in ripening the Strawberry Grape, which are so very nearly, but not quite, ready for the picking. 

Such is the way here when the weather turns in autumn and we find that it is now impossible to get onto the fields again until the spring. But the grape holds promise. In a good year, and I still haven’t given up hope, ‘Fragola’ is a reliable outdoor grape, a marker of summer and sunlight captured. Memories of sunnier climes and the dappled light beneath festooned bowers. The joy, in the cool damp of England, of reaching up and picking a bunch for the table. 

My vine has a history, as most of the plants will have as time goes on in the garden, but this is one that I am particularly fond of. When I was starting out in my career making gardens, working out of the back of a yellow van to build, plant and then tend, Priscilla and Antonio Carluccio were some of my first clients. My great friend Frances, with whom I was making Home Farm, had introduced us, thinking we might be a good fit and knowing the rigour of Priscilla’s design eye she thought it would do me good. And she was right. 

Their property was in Hampshire, not far from where I grew up, but in a totally different landscape high up on a flinty hill on the edge of downland. A thatched, low-slung cottage dating to the 1500’s set the scene and Priscilla approached everything with the care of ensuring that every mark we made felt right in this place. At the time she was the creative director of The Conran Shop and she had the rigour of her brother Terence. With her buyer’s eye everything was considered and she taught me about connections and going deep into an idea to find the thing that captures its essence. Antonio was also a central part of how the brief came together and the garden focused itself around a productive heart from which we later ate heartily. There was a simple hedged enclosure to provide shelter for a kitchen garden with fruits and herbs and hard to come by vegetables, an orchard, a nuttery and a yard full of lavender, tree lupins and oxeye daisies.

We would discuss plans and progress over a simple but delicious lunch cooked and often foraged by Antonio. Mushrooms and filberts from the woods in autumn, hop shoots and wild garlic in the spring. The conversation usually revolved around authenticity, of distilling the spirit of the place and its particularities, and of attention to detail. The curtains in the house were raw muslin and unhemmed, the paintwork just undercoat so that it looked chalky. Hazel we harvested ourselves from the coppice to weave a bower for the rose around the door or to cut stakes for the apples. Tree ties were made from hessian and nothing was used that wasn’t biodegradable. Over the five years we worked together I learned a lot in the doing whilst helping to make this place. 

Antonio had a cutting of the Strawberry Grape given by a friend in Italy. He told me about the wine made from them called Fragolino and of the particular taste of the fruit eaten from the vine.  I had never encountered it before, but we found a warm spot against the woodshed where it thrived and fruited well after just a couple of years. Sure enough, when darkened by late summer sun, the fruit yielded an unusual flavour. Something between strawberries and bubblegum and certainly not an obvious choice for a table grape. But its ease and readiness in our climate and its good clean behaviour have kept it a place in my heart. 

At his invitation I took my own hardwood cuttings from Antonio’s plant as soon as the leaves dropped. The thickness of a pencil, but a little longer, with a sloping cut above a bud to throw the water off in winter and a horizontal cut immediately below a bud, the summer sugars will convert all their energy into root by springtime. In a year you have a new plant, which in two will be ready for its new home. That first plant scrambled over the roof of my flat in Bonnington Square, a cutting taken from that competed with Virginia creeper to smother the trellis at the end of our Peckham garden, and now I have a plant tucked in the most sheltered corner we have next to the outdoor kitchen, where we are encouraging it to grow up and soften the roofline of the building. Over the years I have passed on countless rooted cuttings from my own plant to friends and clients and always with the memory of that first gifting from Antonio, so they are given with the good feelings attached to that memory I describe here. All we need now is a little more sunshine to make good the promise.

Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan

Published 3 October 2020

Planting the fruit orchard was one of our first major projects the winter we arrived here. I knew where I wanted to see it almost immediately, on the south-facing slopes beyond the barns to the west. Nestled into the hill, it was to continue the spine of productivity that runs along this contour.  House, vegetable garden, barns, compost heaps and then orchard. It had a rhythm to it that felt comfortable.

Later, and after it was planted, neighbours told us that there had once been fruit trees growing on the same slopes, so it was right to have made the move so quickly. I’d been wanting to plant an orchard for myself for years and made my lists with relish, choosing West Country apples, both cookers and eaters, and a number of pears and plums. I paced out the planting stations in an offset grid with 8 metres between the trees. Doing it by eye meant that it went with the slope and the grid took on a more informal feeling that was less rigid.

The Plum Orchard

Thirteen apples were set on their own on the lower slope, whilst five pears and then the plums sat above them.  In making the decision as to how the orchard should step across the slope, I noted how the frost settled and where the cold air drained as it pooled lower in the hollow. The pears, which like a warm, sheltered position, were planted up close to the barns in the lea provided by the hedge and the buildings. The later-flowering apples were placed lower down the slope in the hope that the frosts, which tend to hang low, were mostly over by the time they were in blossom. The early-to-flower plum orchard was put on the highest ground that linked to the blossom wood in the next field above, as they also prefer a warm, free-draining position. Here they have so far escaped the frosts. To date, for there is still always time to learn, I am happy to have gone with my intuition.

The plum orchard is a loose term for the collection of a dozen or so trees that now inhabit this top corner of the field. I say loose because they all have different characteristics that are driven by the original species from which they have been selected, or from the cross between the edible species. So, to explain, the plum orchard includes true plums, mirabelle plums, damson plums and greengages. We also have two bullace, an old term for a wild plum. Three yellow ones, given to us by a local farmer who has them growing in the hedgerows above our land, are planted in the hedge between the plum orchard and the blossom wood. They may be ‘Shepherd’s Bullace’ or ‘Yellow Apricot Bullace’, two old named varieties that were once very commonly grown. These make a link to an ancient, gnarled tree by the barns, which is dark violet and eats like a damson. The cherry plums (Prunus cerasifera) sit in the blossom wood itself.

Yellow bullace

The old black bullace by the barns

First to flower, and indeed to fruit, are the cherry plums, which are good both for February blossom and jam making. Their flavour reminds me of the perfumed Japanese ume plums and we have in the past made a delicious plum  brandy from them. In the orchard it is the mirabelle plums (first recommended to me by Nigel Slater, who grows them at the end of his garden) that are the first to flower and fruit. Originally from Eastern Europe, but grown to perfection in France, this is a small plum, usually with a tart flavour. Generally preferred for cooking, ‘Mirabelle de Nancy’ has marble sized, apricot-coloured fruit which are fragrant and sweet enough to eat off the tree if picked just before they drop. ‘Gypsy’, with larger red fruit, is a cooker and the earliest of them all, ripe almost a month ago. If I were to lose one, it would be ‘Golden Sphere’, whose flavour is bland in comparison, but it is a pretty plum, well-named for its colour.

Cherry plums

Mirabelle de Nancy

If I were only able to have one plum tree, it would be a greengage. As a rule, the yellow plums are said to have better flavour than the reds, but greengages are the most aromatic and, in our opinion, the most delicious. Of course, there is a small price to pay for such a delicacy, as greengages have a reputation for being shy to fruit. I have five in the orchard.  ‘Early Transparent’ is the most reliable and has fruited plentifully. ‘Denniston’s Superb’ fruited well this year too and has the very best flavour. Despite the skins being less than perfect, the greengage perfume and the depth of flavour of this greengage is superlative – as refined and floral as a good ‘Doyenne de Comice’ pear or, if you were living in heat, a freshly picked white peach. I have three more greengages that are yet to prove themselves; ‘Reine Claude de Bavay’, which is famously shy to fruit, ‘Bryanston Gage’ and ‘Cambridge Gage’, which the sheep have managed to reach, pulled at and damaged, so I am waiting patiently for results next year.

Gage ‘Early Transparent’

We have two true plums in the orchard. ‘Victoria (Willis Clone)’, a selection that is reputedly free of silverleaf, an airborne bacteria to which ‘Victoria’ is prone and which can infect broken branches in the summer. Plums, particularly the heavy fruited ‘Victoria’, are famous for snapping under the weight of their fruit, so I have taken to gently shaking the tree a little earlier in summer to lighten the load that the June Drop hasn’t done for.  Though the ‘Victoria’ is a good looking plum – it is next to ripen after the greengages – it is nice but rather ordinary. It is, however, indispensable for freezing for winter crumbles. ‘Warwickshire Drooper’, a vigorous and amber-fruited plum, is better I think. Adaptable for being both an eater and a cooker, and not a plum you can buy off the shelf like ‘Victoria’. It is also a very heavy cropper and makes delicious jam.

Plum ‘Victoria (Willis Clone)’

Plum ‘Warwickshire Drooper’

The damsons are perhaps the most beautiful, hanging dark and mysterious, with a violet-grey bloom that, when you reach out and brush the surface, reveals the depth of colour beneath. These are the last to fruit and this year I fear we will miss them in the fortnight we go away on holiday in early September. ‘Shropshire Prune’ (main image) has proven itself to be one of the most reliable fruiters with small, perfumed fruit that are firm and make the strongest flavoured jam. A little earlier and larger of fruit, ‘Merryweather’ also has very good flavour and is one of the only damsons sweet enough to eat from the tree if left to fully ripen.

Damson ‘Merryweather’

The plums are something you have to watch as they ripen, for they take some time to ready but, when they do, they all ripen over the space of a fortnight. The range of varieties in the plum orchard helps here in staggering the harvest, but getting to them before the wasps do is always a challenge. This year, however, we are bombarded with fruit which means there is plenty to go round, and I have been heartened to see that the rotting fruit also provides a late summer larder for honeybees and butterflies. I have a long, three-legged ladder with an adjustable third leg ideal for picking on our slopes but, for expediency, it has been quicker to lay down tarps on the hummocky grass and gently shake the trees. The fruit cascades around you and you can pluck the best without reaching into the branches to be stung by the competition.

Words: Dan Pearson / Photographs: Huw Morgan

Published 26 August 2017

When we arrived here, the house sat alone on the hill. Only the hollies by the milking barn and a pair of old plums in the hedge alongside the house stood sentinel, catching the wind and the rummage of seasonal blackbirds and pigeons. As we moved here in winter it took a while to realise that bird song comes only from a distance and from the refuge of the hedges, which run along the lane and the field margins. Walking down the slope in front of the house that first spring, we soon heard that it is the wood below us that provides the haven for birds. I was brought up in woodland and so am familiar with its qualities. The sound of wood pigeons close to the bedroom windows, the constant activity of bird life in the branches, wind caught in leaves, the movement of dappled light and shade. Living in London was as intimate in its own way; the world around us so close and connected and plants pressed up against the windows. Although I love the country contrast of letting my eye travel here, I struggled initially with the degree of openness surrounding us. Not only was the space acoustically different, the feeling of exposure was unfamiliar and begged understanding. I knew early on – certainly within a couple of months – that we needed trees around us, and herein lay a conundrum. Plant indiscriminately and I was at risk of foreshortening the views that had made us fall in love with the property. But, perched on our hillside, we needed to hunker the house down, to feel as you do when settled into a high-backed sofa, with the feeling of comfort enveloping you whilst still being part of the room. Malus transitoria on the slope behind the house Before the first winter was out, I ordered a dozen crab apples to make a huddle of trees on the slope behind the house. It took much deliberation to decide where they should go. The track leading to the tin barns provided the anchor point between the hedge on its lower side and the open banks above it. The new trees would add an upper storey to the hedge and provide the shelter for a bat corridor. At roughly eight paces between them, they would also offer an easy hop from one to another for the birds. As has become the way here, I staked out their positions with six-foot canes topped with hazard tape so that they are easy to see from a distance. I wanted the trees to arch over the track eventually, like the old holloways hereabouts, to provide a tunnel of blossom in spring and a shady place to emerge from into the light in summer. I didn’t want them in rows or for them to feel organised like an orchard. Over the course of a month the markers were moved about and the sight lines tested until the placement felt right. The crabs were suitable for feeling productive, but I also wanted them to have a connection with the hawthorns in the top hedgerow that we had allowed to grow out to provide shade for the livestock in summer. Malus transitoria I had been looking at crab apples for quite a few years in a search of a blossom tree that was neither cherry nor amelanchier, which had become my reflex choices when planting blossom for clients. There is a wealth of crabs to choose from and, although I knew Malus ‘Evereste’, ‘John Downie’ and ‘Hornet’ from gardens I had worked at or visited, I wanted mine to be on the wild side, and so I honed my selection to what are probably the best two species. Malus transitoria was chosen specifically for its wilding quality and, of the two species on the bank, it opens a few days earlier than its partner. Known as the cut-leaf crab apple its leaves are slim and divided, not entire like the usual apple foliage, and could easily be mistaken for hawthorn. They have a lacy quality and so the tree retains a lightness when in leaf. The flowers are pale pink in bud and, though small, completely cover the tree and open in a glorious froth to weight the branches with pure white blossom. The petals are narrow and separate, splayed around a burst of orange-tipped anthers, giving the flowers a star-like quality. After flowering you could easily think the trees were native, but the tiny fruits give them away in autumn when the amber beads pepper the yellowing branches. Malus hupehensis Malus hupehensis, the Chinese tea crab, is the best crab apple according to experienced tree people and another fine discovery of the great plant hunter, Ernest Wilson. Wilson had impeccable taste and the tree, which is quite substantial in maturity, is a spectacle in flower. Once again it is pink in bud, but a stronger shade so that, from a distance, the tree appears pale pink. The flowers are altogether more flamboyant, large and bowl-shaped, hanging gracefully on long pedicels and blowing open to a pure, glistening white flushed with pink. When a tree is in bud and flower, it is a breathtaking moment. The flowers have a deliciously fresh perfume, as welcome as newly mown grass in this window between spring and summer. Malus hupehensis (and main image)I like to plant my trees as young feathered maidens. This is one stage further on from a whip, so the trees have their first side branches and stand about a metre twenty high. They are easy to handle at this size and with care they establish quickly to outstrip a more mature tree planted for immediate affect. Malus hupehensis, the Great Dixter form That first winter I planted the crabs I didn’t know that there are two forms of Malus hupehensis. It was one of Christopher Lloyd’s favourite trees and, naturally, he selected a superior form. Those that shade the car park at Great Dixter are smaller berried, with deep red fruit half the size of the marble-sized fruits on my form. At this size, they are more easily eaten by birds and, had I known, I would have preferred them for the track behind the house for the rush of bird life come the autumn. Malus hupehensis, the Great Dixter form Look closely and you see that the Dixter trees are more elegant in all their parts; the branches are finer and the tree more open, the leaves are elongated and flushed with bronze when young, and the flowers are slightly fuller, a purer white in bud and open, and with longer pedicels that allow them to tremble exquisitely in the wind. Of course, I bought a couple from the nursery as soon as I saw them. One as an entrance tree by our front gate and the other on the edge of the blossom wood, where it is visible from the house. I already have seedlings from these trees in the cold frame, as they come easily and true from seed. Totally smitten, as time goes on I plan to extend their influence.

“…it is very beautiful in spring when covered with light pink flowers, and resembles at this time a flowering cherry rather than an apple tree; the effect of the flowers is heightened by the purple calyx and the purplish tints of the unfolding leaves.”

—Ernest Wilson of Malus hupehensis

Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan

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