TREES FORFREE
Sometimes the best things in life arrive uninvited, Leigh Bramwell discovers.
WHEN WE FIRST started landscaping this section I was desperate for cheap trees and shrubs. This was an orchard back then and had over a hundred lime trees on it which, once they were removed, left it looking naked and forlorn.
Yes, I can hear you asking why anyone with half a brain would remove a hundred mature, producing, lucrative lime trees but we wanted a garden, not an orchard, and there wasn’t room for both. Now, 22 years later, I must admit that the lime orchard would have been much easier to care for and much easier on the pocket. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
The irony of it is, now that our garden is well established and we have less need for cheap plants, we have plenty of them. Many of ours have self-seeded and we’re always discovering rogue palm trees, brugmansia, fatsia, viburnum and loquat among others.
Of course I can’t bear to waste them so areas we promised we wouldn’t plant (in the interests of lower maintenance) are being earmarked for new landscaping. Easy-care, of course.
Thanks to someone who dumped a load of loquat cuttings on our boundary three or four years ago, we have an endless supply of loquats in varying sizes. These taken-for-granted little charmers are shapely, bushy, fast-growing and evergreen, with flowers, fragrance and fruit. Ticking all the boxes, then.
There are three growing within the boundaries of our property — one of which
I planted to cover up the side of the garden shed, which it obligingly accomplished quickly and without fuss. It’s fruiting now and my 10-year-old great-nephew brings handfuls to me when he comes to visit. I’d never really bothered with them before but they’re a subtle mix of peach, citrus and mild mango. Yum, actually.
The loquat is indigenous to southeastern China and is said to have been cultivated in Japan for over 1000 years.
Being a subtropical, they like to be warm but not scorched, and they’re fairly windand salt-tolerant. They tolerate a bit of cold although it does affect fruit production, and they appreciate frost protection in their youth. They are not particular about soil but they do like good drainage, although they’ll handle moderately wet soils or drought.
I’m planning on planting about a half a dozen of these easy-going little charmers on our bank, and I’ll let them grow to their full height, which will likely be about three metres. I might also try one in a container and grow it on our terrace. Apparently they behave beautifully in containers and will even submit to being espaliered. How cooperative is that?
TAMARILLO
My other self-seeded success story is also a fruiting tree and again, not one that I’d taken much notice of. A friend identified it as a tamarillo, which surprised me because I’ve never planted a tamarillo here. I don’t like them because I’m not fond of fruit that makes your cheeks turn inside out, and it never occurred to me one would simply arrive uninvited and plant itself.
Tamarillo is another of those fruit that used to be called something else but had its name changed, probably in the interests of marketing. When I was a kid tamarillos were called tree tomatoes, just as kiwifruit were Chinese gooseberries and aubergines were eggplant.
A few years ago researchers at Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab found that using attractive names for healthy foods increased children’s selection and consumption of those foods. Name intervention, they call it. The name change hasn’t persuaded me to learn to like tamarillo, but I may be persuaded by a variety called Tango, which is not so tart. It’s described as sweet with low acidity.
When our tamarillo arrived here, it obviously knew what it was doing because it planted itself in the perfect place. It chose a warm, sunny, sheltered, sloping site with mounded-up, free-draining soil to avoid wet feet. And it’s out of the wind, which is essential because these plants are shallowrooted and won’t stand being knocked around. It’s also well away from the part of our garden that occasionally gets a frost. Clever thing.
Now we need to find another tamarillo to give ours a mate. Although tamarillo flowers are self-fertilising, the plant will crop better if cross-pollinated by bees and wind moving the pollen between the flowers.
The new growth will produce flowers in summer and early autumn and I’m looking forward to seeing them, even though they’re not nearly as showy as the fruit. I may not like the taste, but the fruit are dropdead gorgeous and will look very stylish in a black ceramic bowl on my kitchen bench.