Berried Treasure

Above: This hips of R.Glauca

Fruit is the second bite of the cherry. Usually, when buying shrubs and trees, all we consider is a mass of blossom but, when carefully chosen, they bring the bonus of glorious berries later. Better to forget those cherries like bridal froth for a couple of weeks and all too dreary later, and go for hawthorns or crab apples with autumnal fruit as well. They look good, and keep the birds going through winter. Most berries are red, the one colour birds can see, but they can also be every other colour in the rainbow.

To bear berries, most blossom must have single flowers with only five petals – double ones are usually infertile. Pollinating bees and insects circle the blossom, imbuing the scene with life and purpose. Crataegus ‘Crimson Cloud’ is an excellent hawthorn, while Malus ‘John Downie’ is a crab with delicate, white blossom followed by such glossy, red apples it seems sacrilege to pick them. Malus ‘Wisley Crab’ has bronzy flowers, leaves and fruit. 

December is for holly, and here male and female flowers grow on separate plants, meaning that you only get berries from a female with a male nearby – your neighbour’s will do – for fertilisation. As well as the common holly, I like Ilex aquifolium ‘Argentea Marginata’ with white margins on the prickly leaves and orange-red berries.

The rowan is an ideal tree for smaller gardens since it takes up little room, gives no trouble, requires no pruning, and grows on all soils. Good varieties are Sorbus aucuparia ‘Asplenifolia’ with orange fruit, and S.cashmiriana with pearly fruit. The fluffy, white flowers are borne among ferny leaves, and later the berries remain when the leaves have gone. When planting, remember that pale berries show up against a dark background, and red ones are brilliant against evergreens.

One undemanding shrub not often mentioned is cotoneaster. I love Cotoneaster horizontalis – herringbone cotoneaster – and the way it flattens itself against a wall fanning out curved branches. It can also be grown as a low hedge. In summer, its little white flowers are popular with bumblebees, but now it looks even better with bare, silky branches threaded with scarlet berries. If you need a small tree to screen an ugly building, try the evergreen Cotoneaster x watereri, and when buying make sure you have one with a single rather than several stems. C.‘Rothschildianus’ has large, pale-yellow berries. Both can take the shade.

One reason for growing species (from the wild) roses is their autumn hips. Try the whiskery, orange flagons of Rosa moysii, which earlier had huge dusky-red single flowers, the huge tomato hips of R. rugosa, rich in vitamin C and, perfect in any garden, R.glauca with glistening hips, arching pink stems and grey leaves.

Few herbaceous plants are grown for berries, yet there are the bright-red beads of the Gladdon iris, Iris  foetidia, the one iris to flourish in shade. And I must mention Dianella tasmanica which has spiky leaves and obscure little blue-green flowers in summer, and finishes with stunning blue berries that might have been carved from jasper. 

Along the hedges of Dorset now we see the berries of hawthorn, privet and the spindleberry with its pink and orange buttons, and wild viburnum with clusters like red then black caviar.  In gardens there’s Viburnum davidii with bluish berries, spiky firethorn bubbling red, orange or yellow, white snowberries and, on acid soils, Pernyetta mucronata whose berries can be white, red, pink, purple or even lilac.

Fruit tells us that nature has completed her cycle, but new life lies ahead.