IF you read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child and dreamed of Willy Wonka’s delicious fruity wallpaper covered in snozzberries, you’ll be close to the sense of luxury and pleasure that comes with eating homegrown fruit. I feel this especially with berries: to be able to pick handfuls to enjoy straight from the plant without cooking or even washing makes me unnaturally happy. As much as I love blackberries, raspberries and strawberries, there is a special magic about those flavours beyond the supermarket shelves. Wineberries, blue honeysuckle, Chilean guava, jostaberries, and more—all delicious—are among the many you can only enjoy if you grow them yourself.
Japanese wineberries were my first taste of unusual berries and, of those that resemble blackberries in growing habit, I think they are the most beautiful. Small, pale-pink flowers cover the plant in early summer, after which the calyxes open to reveal berries that ripen quickly from bright green to vivid orange to deep crimson. The fruit is sweet and delicious: imagine a crossover of blackberries, raspberries, mulberries, and with a distinctive winey, grapevines. Native to northern China, Korea, and Japan, wineberries were introduced to Europe and North America primarily to cross with raspberries, but they are so well uncompromised by hybridization. At the end of the season, the arching canes’ soft, rust-red bristles catch the winter sun, bringing a dash of colour to the garden throughout the cold months.
Denne historien er fra August 25, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra August 25, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
