
July-August 2018
1870s (you can now buy it on CD from the Marcher
Apple Network). Then I cleared two and a half plots
and planted the best varieties I could find. I lef t just
as the trees were ready to fruit. But land here in mid-
Wales is cheap. I bought half an acre and have star ted
planting a second orchard.
When I first tried to place an order, I caused great
excitement among the nurseries I phoned. Where had
I seen these apples? Who recommended them? Two of
them, I discovered, had been
extinct for at least 50 years. So
I have had to settle for second
best, by which I mean breeds
which still exist. I began by
planting a Ribston Pippin and
an Ashmead’s Kernel. These
apples, both exquisite when fully ripe, can be stored
from October till May. To spread the fruit as f ar through
the year as possible, I have ordered an apple called
the Irish Peach, which ripens in early August; a St
Edmund’s Pippin (September) and a Wyken Pippin
(December to April).
After a long search I think I have pinned down the
apple I once tasted and loved in a friend’s garden. I’m
pretty confident that it was a Forfar, also know as
the Dutch Mignonne, so I’ve bought one of those
too. If I’d had more space, I would also have planted
a Catshead, a Boston Russet, a Sturmer Pippin and
a Reinette Grise.
I have bought two pears – a Seckle and a Beurre
Rance – a green plum (the Cambridge Gage), a fig, a
medlar, a peach, currants, gooseberries, raspberries,
loganberries and blueberries. But what excites me
most are the suggestions made by a man called Ken
Fern.
Once a London bus driver, Fern has spent most of
his life cataloguing and growing the edible species
of fruit and vegetable which can sur vive in this coun-
try. His list now extends to 7000, some of which are
featured in his book
Plants for a Future
. I’ve decided
to buy an Arnold Thorn (Crataegus arnoldiana), which
belongs to the same genus as the hawthorn, but
grows sweet juicy fruits the size of cherries, and to
replace my hedge with Eleagnus x ebbingei, which
produces sweet red berries with edible seeds, in
(uniquely) April and May. This means, if it works out,
that I can eat fresh fruit all the year round. I can
store apples and Beurre Rance pears until the Elea-
gnus fruits, then my strawberries should be ready
more or less when it stops. One day when I can
afford it I will buy more land and plant a few dozen
of the weird species Fern has found.
Most people have less space than I do, but even
a tiny garden can support half a dozen apple trees,
if you grow them as cordons (single stems with shor t
spurs) 80cm apart against a wall. If you have room
for only a couple of pots, you could grow blueber-
ries, strawberries, cranberries or some of the little
shrubs Ken Fern recommends, such as Vaccinium
praestans and Gaultheria shallon.
Or you could become a guerilla planter or guerilla
graf ter, growing fruit on roadsides, on commons and
in parks and wasteland. Apple twigs of any kind can
be grafted onto crab trees. Medlars and one breed
of pear (a delicious variety called Josephine des
Malines) can be grafted onto hawthorn. Kiwi fruit,
passion f ruit and a vine called Schisandra grandiflora
will climb into trees of any kind.
It’s not just the produce I love. When you start
growing fruit, you enter a world of recondite knowl-
edge, accumulated over centuries of amateur
experiments.
You must choose the right rootstocks and polli-
nators and learn about bees, birds and caterpillars.
But above all you must learn patience. Growing fruit
forces you to think ahead, to imagine a sweeter
future and then to wait.
Perhaps it is this, as much as the forgotten fla-
vours, that I have been missing.
This article was first published in The Guardian;
www.monbiot.com
.
The variety of native fruits on
sale is smaller than it has been
for 200 years