Berried treasure
Falling leaves aren’t the only things that add glorious autumn colour to your garden, says Monty Don
BERRIES are the surprise gifts that light up autumn. A berry is defined as a f ruit with the seeds wrapped in pulpy flesh, which attracts birds and animals to eat them, thus spreading the seeds.
Grapes are berries, as are tomatoes, bananas, cucumbers and watermelons, while – technically – raspberries, strawberries and blackberries are not. But that is botanical nicety.
The berries that are probably the brightest thing in our gardens right now are the ornamental fruit of trees, shrubs and climbers such as roses, hollies and hawthorns, although there is a wide range of plants to choose from that will produce them. As berries are produced from a plant’s flowers, and will appear as the blooms have faded and fallen, species that flower before the end of June tend to produce a better berry display in the autumn because the little orbs, like all fruit, need time and sunshine to ripen.
The berries produced by roses – what we call rose hips – appear in very diverse forms, from great tomato-like ones on rugosa shrub roses, to gobstoppers on Rosa ‘ Scharlachglut’, oval aniseed balls on dog roses, black ones on R. pimpinellifolia and small dangles of orange on R. cantabrigiensis and R. willmottiae.
R. moyesii remains one of my favourite roses: it produces wonderful single crimson flowers that speckle large upright bushes, but the hips – orange flagons, long and waisted like gourds — are better still. The very best berries in my garden, however, belong to a rambling rose called ‘Edith’. I have this growing up through a standard ‘ Chivers Delight’ apple tree and for a few weeks in October the combination of the rather small (but delicious) orangey-red apples and the mass of orange hips is just wonderful. In fact, the hips of ‘Edith’ last for ages, well into the new year and long after every apple has fallen.
LAST year I planted a little bed specifically to produce berries, both as a decorative display and to provide food for birds. This backs onto a hedge dominated by hawthorn, whose berries are the mainstay for birds, especially winter visitors such as fieldfares and redwings. To this bed I’ve added a number of shrubs chosen for the variety and range of their berries. The most unusual is Callicarpa bodinieri var. giraldii, an unspectacular shrub for most of the year but which produces incredible berries that are a gleaming, almost metallic purple.
Another unusual berry belongs to Clerodendrum trichotomum var. fargesii – they are bright blue and develop from white flowers that open from mid- summer. It does best in a very sunny spot – mine is partly shaded – and is not fully hardy so I give it a very thick mulch in autumn to protect the roots from hard frost.
Much tougher is Viburnum opulus ‘Xanthocarpum’, which has lace- cap flowers in spring that convert into gold and yellow berries. It is very adaptable, growing in full sun or part shade and tolerating most soils as long as it is not waterlogged. Pollinators love the flowers as much as birds do the fruits. I also planted another viburnum, the evergreen V. tinus ‘Eve Price’, which produces its pale-pink flowers in very early spring, and these then become blue-black berries.
Finally there i s Leycesteria formosa. It produces claret-andwhite flowers from mid-summer and these then become coloured berries in autumn, which are gobbled up by the blackbirds. It looks exotic but is easily grown, adapting to sun or shade and almost any soil.