The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Berry good tartan
Town’s history celebrated in cloth
Thomas Thomson (Blairgowrie) Ltd has been associated with the berry industry in the town for more than 100 years. Since the 1890s, raspberries have been grown in the fields surrounding their mills beside the River Ericht which runs through the town.
It’s thanks to the perfect growing conditions and wonderfully fertile soil that Strathmore, the garden of Scotland, has been producing the most mouthwatering soft fruit for generations. The Scottish raspberry industry was born in Blairgowrie more than 100 years ago and the town is known as the berry capital of the UK, earning it the nickname “Berry Town”.
Blairgowrie’s berry farming industry began at the end of the 19th Century when local solicitor, Mr J M Hodge (who once rented land from Thomas Thomson for raspberry growing) created the Blairgowrie and Rattray Fruitgrowers’ Association. This turned the tide of what had been a small-scale cottage industry, helping it rapidly flourish into big business in the early part of the 20th Century.
In 1935 the company Blairgowrie Raspberry Growers was formed by local farmers – including Mr Thomson – to send fruit all over the country, later opening their own freezing factory in Dundee. The town’s thriving soft fruit industry ran alongside its long-established textile spinning mills, which ultimately ceased operation in 1979 with the closure of the Thomson mills.
Where once the fruit was picked by local people, in the years that passed, the growing scale of the berry season drew increasing numbers of fruit pickers to Blairgowrie, among them families keen to earn money picking fruit while enjoying the countryside and Scotland’s travelling people. To house the pickers, corrugated iron buildings with wooden bunks were erected on the farms and in 1905 a settlement known as Tin City was established, which could accommodate around 1,000 workers and boasted a grocer’s shop, post office and recreation room with piano.
These days, the berry season attracts a new generation of fruit picker, with many
coming from central Europe. Raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, redcurrants, aronia and gooseberries are produced using time-honoured skills together with cutting edge techniques. Polytunnels help to protect the delicate berries, while the latest research helps to reduce the use of pesticides without compromising the quality of the fruit.
Growers have always had to be enterprising and react to the market demands – changing season and methods of production, varieties and the types of berries grown. For example, blueberries have only really become a commercial crop in Scotland in the last 10 years and there have been a lot of technical changes in the way raspberries and strawberries are grown in the last 20 years and Scotland faces greater competition in these crops from down south and abroad.
Melanie and Peter Thomson made their first planting of sweet cherries in 2011 and a number of other growers around Blairgowrie have followed suit.
Melanie said: “I’m delighted we can produce such large sweet and juicy cherries – they easily match or surpass the quality of those grown elsewhere!
“We hope that Blairgowrie will become renowned not just for its berries, but also for its cherries in the future. We are playing to Scotland’s strengths of being the latest area in the northern hemisphere to produce these crops, so the supermarkets can keep home-grown produce on their shelves before they switch to sourcing from the southern hemisphere.”
Inspired by the wealth of delicious berries and cherries grown around Blairgowrie, local weaver Ashleigh Slater created a new tartan, which was on display at Ashleigh’s Warpweftweave Studio in Lesley Street during last year’s Perthshire Open Studios.
The tartan caught Melanie’s eye and she was delighted to discover the inspiration behind it, deciding to support Ashleigh in registering the new tartan. Together they named it Blairgowrie Berries and Cherries and hope it will become a useful design to promote the town.
The choice of warm colours match the variety of fruits grown in Blairgowrie.
Melanie added: “We can’t class cherries as a berry, so decided that the inclusion of both in the name of the tartan shows that the tartan, whilst traditional, gives a nod to modernity and changing times and so that the crops being grown in the area will also get some publicity.”