The Wild Cherry Tree
Cherry trees are very special landmarks in the countryside or people’s gardens, and the taste of a really good cherry is evocative of high summer. We had a wild cherry tree in our garden and I used to lick my lips all summer at the thought of my mum’s wild cherry ice cream. Wild cherries are very tart when raw but when cooked with sugar are utterly delicious.
It was a great sadness to me as a little boy when my parents said that they were going to cut the cherry tree down because it was too close to the house. I still feel sad about it however practical the reality of the situation was.
I did plant another cherry recently but it has not been nearly as successful; the birds always get the fruit. So the only time I get to eat really delicious cherries is when I go to Brogdale’s Cherry Fair in Kent, and oh my god, the cherries are fantastic. So many different types and colours, full of flavour because no thought is given to how they travel or are stored (like so many tasteless supermarket cherries). A personal favourite is called ‘Turkish Black’, which has very dark and quite small fruits, but a richness of flavour that’s just divine! Combine it with a trip to Broadstairs (for fish and chips) and you have a fantastic day out.
Wild Strawberries (Fragaria vesca)
Not only is the fruit of the wild strawberry extremely delicious, delicate and exclusive but also it makes an easy and versatile garden plant. This is because it has pretty Rosaceae shaped flowers in spring and attractive distinctive foliage throughout the year and is tolerant of a wild variety of soils and situations.
Similarly, its pure white flowers with their yellow centres combine well with the Snake’s-head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) in April to create an impressive springtime drift in herbaceous borders.
As if that’s not enough, being able to rummage around in the undergrowth in mid-summer and emerge with some wild strawberries from your own garden can seem very sophisticated. Indeed, one of my previous clients, who was a bit of snob, found it very satisfying to do this for his guests at barbeques. Often found growing wild in abandoned gardens and railway sidings and with a preference for chalky soil, wild strawberry plants are something I always take great pleasure in finding in the wild.
There is one slight problem with picking the fruit in that it must be completely ripe to taste delicious and it’s hard to get it at that precise moment. Still, it’s far superior to its bigger brother, that bland brute of a strawberry grown in polytunnels!
I would like to eat my wild strawberries in the same way as Gerald Durrell’s pet tortoise, Achilles, described in his book, My Family and Other Animals.
‘[Achilles] would become positively hysterical at the sight of them, lumbering to and fro, craning his head to see if you would give him any, gazing pleadingly with his boot button eyes. If you gave him a big one … he would grab the fruit and … stumble off at top speed until he reached a safe and secluded spot amongst the flower beds where he would … eat it at his leisure.’
Herb Bennet (Geum urbanum)
This plant is a seriously invasive weed. Still, I can’t completely weed it out because its flowers look so dainty and it seed-heads so attractive. I did notice last June in midsummer that all the herb bennet were seemingly flowering together and then the following week they all had seed-heads, which made me wonder whether they danced together all through the night on midsummer’s eve…
When I mentioned my liking for this plant to another gardener he also said he had a soft spot for it, because he had apparently watched a dormouse repeatedly bend the seed-heads over to collect the seeds for snacking on.
Foot-note- I include the image used for the snippet about the herb bennet plants dancing round the mid-summer fire. All of the 17 images in the book were drawn by the talented Anastasia Antonova.
A gardener out of this world 