Apples of my eye

Monty Don began creating his garden 25 years ago – here he reveals the joys of its latest addition

The other day I planted four crab apple trees in my garden. All four are the same variety, ‘Evereste’, and each occupies the central position in one of the four identical beds in my new Paradise Garden. Planting them was easy enough and the whole operation took no more than ten minutes per tree, but I spent a lot longer than 40 minutes choosing which crab apple variety to plant, as I love them and whittling it down to just one was really hard.

There are nearly a thousand different cultivars of crab apple, or Malus sylvestris. Most have green leaves, although a number have rich purple foliage. Most have blossom of some shade of pink, although there are many that are either white or very nearly white. Some though, like ‘Prairie Fire’, have rich red flowers. The fruits that result from the blossom range from the bright yellow of ‘Golden Hornet’ or ‘Butterball’ to the plum burgundy of ‘Laura’ or ‘Roberts’ and run through every shade of orange and pink in between.

Crab apples, like orchard apples, can be grown on a variety of rootstocks, from the very small M27, which are ideal for containers, to full standards grown on M111 rootstocks. They tend to make smallish trees anyway, so I would suggest looking for M111 or M106 if they are to be planted into the garden, so they can grow large enough to realise their full shape and size – which will never be overpowering for even a small garden.

They also make ideal pollinators for culinary apples and, of course, the tiny fruits can be eaten in crab apple jelly, which is one of the great delicacies in life. Richly coloured red fruits will make a wine-coloured jelly, whereas paler ones make a beautifully delicate, translucent version.

The reason that I chose ‘Evereste’ for the Paradise garden was because I already have one and it is magnificent, making a conical, small but robust tree, smothered with fragrant white blossom in spring which converts to a mass of fruits like golden baubles in autumn. These stay on the tree for a good length of time in winter. Because these four trees were so important to the Paradise Garden it was important that I chose a variety I knew would like my soil and weather, so going for one that was already happy here made sense.

I am trying to make my own Herefordshire version of the Islamic Paradise Garden, and though crab apples were not part of the Islamic gardening tradition, apples are absolutely key trees in my part of the world. The important thing was to choose a small tree that bore fruit, had wonderful blossom and superb fragrance and the crab came out top in all points.

Later this week I am off to Japan for a fortnight to film and they have their own crab apple, Malus floribunda. It was introduced into this country in 1862. The flowers, carried on especially long, arching branches, open from deep pink buds and start out pink but fade to white, then develop into tiny yellow fruits. It is a low but wide-spreading tree and when full grown it will be wider than it is tall. This makes it very suitable to grow as a multi-stemmed version, especially if raised in a container.

Malus sargentii is another Japanese species that never grows beyond the size of a large bush and has white flowers with gold centres and brightred fruit. Its size and growth habit make it ideal for a fruity hedge that birds will love in autumn.

The Chinese crab, Malus hupehensis, is one of the very few apple trees that will grow true from seed. It has stiff, upright branches that carry a mass of white blossom very late in spring. These then evolve into deep red, small fruits.

Monty with an established ‘Evereste’ crab apple tree. Inset: Monty gears up to plant his Paradise Garden