Garden JEWELS

Enjoy nature’s glowing bounty with plants that produce richly coloured berries and fruits

- CHRIS MORLEY

Mellow fruitfulness

The long-growing season culminates in a bright display of hips, haws, berries and fruits – a feast for the eye, as well as for birds and other creatures that need to fatten up before winter. It’s easy to incorporate a few of these sparkling beauties into the garden, as border shrubs, specimen trees, boundary hedging or in containers. You can then enjoy flashes of eye-catching colour long into winter.

Decorative baubles

The Japanese dogwood (Cornus kousa) has masses of round, raspberry-like fruit and makes a fine specimen tree (slowly reaching 8m), with starry flowers and fiery autumn leaves. It’s also easily trimmed to keep as a large shrub. The crab apple (Malus) is another winter beacon, its fruits glowing like Christmas tree baubles in the sun. ‘Butterball’ has golden-yellow apples that stay on the tree well into winter, while those of ‘Evereste’ are orange-red flushed with yellow.