Ian Harrison gives us another instance of the pomegranate fruiting in England and also the kumquat, as well as, this year, some very early berry fruits

Although I have not visited it since 1995, I do recall that a pomegranate shrub, such as you described, flowered and fruited in Golder’s Hill Park, north west London. The garden was undergoing extensive restoration and replanting at the time and had a fine team of gardeners working there. Open daily from 7.30 am to dusk it is run now by the Corporation of London. It was originally the garden and grounds of an 18th century mansion landscaped by Humphrey Repton. The old walled garden enjoys a wonderful display of exotics such as bananas, palms, brugmansias and cannas which are lifted in the autumn and removed under cover for winter. Open to the public all year round it is one of London’s treasure gardens truly enjoyed by visitors of all ages.

The pomegranate shrub was growing as part of a permanent planting in a border between the wide footpath and the ramps leading to and from the tea-rooms. It enjoyed whatever sun was available all year round with a solid wall behind it. Other than that I do not think it was given any special treatment.

Listeners to BBC Radio 4 ‘Gardeners Question Time’ will be aware that one gardener in Battersea, south west London, has an avocado tree that ripens fruit year on year. This is due to the ‘Battersea effect’ which gives the borough an average of one to two degrees warmer temperatures year round, than neighbouring boroughs.

I strongly suspect there is a very long history indeed of successful culture of tender-fruiting plants in London, particularly around the old City waiting to be revealed. Thanks to recent publications, such as Michael Leapman’s The Ingenious Mr Fairchild and Malcolm Thick’s The Neat House Gardens, we can get a precious glimpse of what has been grown successfully out of doors in London since Medieval times. Much more work needs to be done here.

Here, on the coastal strip between the South Downs and the sea we have had some surprises. On an allotment I took over a kumquat has survived for five years. It flowers and fruits every year, left to its own devices by the previous tenant, during  winter and spring months it holds its fruit but suffered badly from insects which had colonised it. Since I took it over, it has been pruned as an open centre bush, cleaned of insects, fed on citrus plant food as well as sea weed and taken on a new lease of life!

So far this year I have noticed some extraordinary developments manifest themselves among the soft fruits I have been growing for the last ten years. This year I was late in starting the forced strawberries in my unheated greenhouse. I took them in on 18 February, carefully removing all the leaf down to the young crowns. Normally I do this mid-January and expect to crop around 1 May. Flowers were formed by 16 March. The first strawberry ripened on 26 April and the last were picked on 25 May. I do not pollinate them, or my peach, by hand, I leave that work to insects in the greenhouse and the occasional brush as I turn the pots around every other day. I do not thin fruit either as recommended in the classic work on the subject by D. Macer Wright published in 1973. The fruits were all, when eaten, highly flavoured, with a good balance of fruit acids and sugar and, quite simply, the best forced strawberries I have eaten. Next year I will begin forcing in mid-January but with only half the pots. The other half will be held back to mid-February so we can see if this difference impacts on flavour.

The next surprise came with tayberries, which normally begin to ripen the third week in June, but this year began to ripen in quantity by 10 June. They were followed a few days later by loganberries which normally ripen their most precious fruits, after the tayberry, early in July. Not to be outdone, Autumn Bliss raspberries began ripening their fruits by 13 June at least a month early for these parts.

Yet barely six months ago the tayberries and loganberries were still carrying green leaves when I examined them on the shortest day of the year. They were still showing signs of growth by extension of the briars that needed tying in on 12 December. A very short period of dormancy was then followed by early fruiting. Nearby roses, Madame Alfred Carrier and Madame Isaac Perrier were producing great bunches of blossom from the first week in May.

If this is happening to soft fruit and their relatives the roses what might the season have in store for us with top fruits? A handful of Celeste cherry picked from a ‘minarette’ on 12 June sadly split due to heavy rain in late May.   


(* Photograph of kumquat tree reproduced with permission from Success with Citrus by Patricia Oliver, published 1993 by Global Orange Groves; www.globalorangegroves.co.uk)