What a year for fruit!

Untamed Gardener

Aisling Blackburn

Fame is but a fruit tree

So very unsound

It can never flourish

'Til its stock is in the ground

- Nick Drake

I’m sitting down to watch the ‘Legacy’, documentary after a long, gorgeous afternoon in the garden. My conscience is restored again, having felt such a fraud writing these articles and not doing much with my own garden But today I heard a cricket in the thicket, saw lots of bees while on my knees, butterflies, fluttered by, I watered and weeded, fed the hungry, did all that was needed.

What a year for fruit! I didn’t get to use any of the blackcurrants, because the birds beat me to them. I got some raspberries, and they are in the freezer awaiting processing. Now it’s blackberries, plums and apple time, and- woah what a harvest. The plum is a wild Cavan damson that grows everywhere like a weed, I’m always pulling them up, leaving a few here and there to grow on. I am a big fan of topiary, and so lately I’ve started to turn them into lollypops - why not - in fact these trained mini trees are fruiting like mad and look just like a child’s idea of a fruit tree.

Gardens may come and go but the apple has been around a long time. The first apple came from Kazakhstan in central Europe 8,000 years ago. It was a hybrid of several wild species. The first known gardens also came from that neck of the woods; the gardens of Persia may be as old as 4000 BCE.

In contrast to modern varieties, bred to produce like broiler hens, one 400-year-old apple tree springs to mind where Sir Isac Newton discovered his theory of gravity. An old variety known as ‘Flower of Kent’ is quite rare nowadays. After some storm damage in the seventeenth century, it regrew and lives at the National Trust site which you can visit at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire if you are inclined.

The tree of knowledge, the fruit of which Eve plucked and gave to Adam, and the red and green apple used to poison Snow White may have given apples a bad rap, but there is no doubt, apples have a fascinating history.

Thanks to the Romans, who brought the apple to England; one of the oldest trees in the walled garden in Jampa Ling is a ‘Beauty of Bath’, which has unfortunately fallen over just recently. It has always been the first to ripen in the garden and as every cloud has a silver lining, now we can easily pick them from its present angle. The roots are still attached so we will wait and see what it does. I don’t know the names of all the other old trees, a legacy from the previous owners, such as the Hunts who bought Owendoon house in the 1890s.

People I associate with apple trees are Charles Robinson from Belturbet, who went the length and breadth of the country to save old varieties; Dr. Keith Lamb for his thesis ‘The apple in Ireland; it’s history and varieties’, and Anita and Tommy Hayse who set up the Irish Seed Savers in Scariff Co. Clare, where I bought my first apples, as one-year-old.

Appleton wonder; Thompson’s apple; Ballyvaughan seedling and the Cavan strawberry. What to say about them… they are all native Irish apples, Ballyvaughan seedling is a self rooter and is good for cooking and cider making. Appletown wonder is an early huge golden yellow variety from Limerick. The Cavan strawberry, so-called because it looks like one, grows very large on what is the smallest tree in the garden. The apple sauce is fantastic.

I also have two favorites that taste very good right off the branch, which is rare, because most need time to become sweet, unlike corn that needs to be consumed immediately after picking. I should mention here that nearly all heritage varieties have excellent resistance to disease. Wo’ster pearmain is my favorite tasting fruit, crunchy, juicy and sweet, fabulous.

The others were grown by Michael Alwill of Killeshandra. I visited him some years before he died in 2012, he was a remarkable gardener, and he has several topiary specimens in his garden. He gave me some lovely plants and amongst them two tiny apple trees grown from pips saying, ‘I don’t know what they are, but they are good ones”. He was right; such beautiful lunch-box golden apples they grew to be. Please get in touch if anyone out there would like to take scions of these apples, fondly known by me as the Michael Alwill apple. Now that is a good legacy.

Aisling Blackburn is a visual artist and horticulturalist who nurtures the community garden at Jampa Ling in Bawnboy.