The Garden History Blog

When asked what is a “blackberry”, apparently 82% of people aged 16-24 instantly imagined a mobile phone rather than a fruit, according to a 2013 survey for YouGov. They don’t know what they’re missing!

This glorious late summer weather [OK… this was written last week!] means that there’s still time to gather wild blackberries from the hedgerow, the fruit being the one upside of an otherwise aggressive colonising  thug of a plant.

Mind you that’s running counter to folklore which says that October 10th the former Michaelmas Day [ie before the change from Julian to Gregorian calendars] should be the last day to pick blackberries because that was the day that Lucifer was expelled from Heaven. He is said to have landed on a blackberry bush, and unsurprisingly roundly cursed it. In other versions of the legend, he spat or even urinated on it!  Of course like so many myths it has an underlying scientific basis: blackberries contain a high concentration of tannins which accumulate in the fruit over the season making later picked berries prone to bitterness, and of course the weather is also likely to be much wetter so the berries contain more fungus spores and are more liable to rot.  For more on the story listen to this clip:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p032hzkr

Blackberries have a long history of being eaten by humans, but a  surprisingly short history in cultivation.  Read on to find out more of  the story behind the one of our favourite soft fruits.

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I’m sure many of you will know the painting of Charles II being offered a pineapple by his gardener, John Rose. It has been widely used  to demonstrate that British horticulture had become so advanced by the later 17thc that it was possible to grow a pineapple in London.

Unfortunately it would seem many writers have fallen for the wanton charms of Google  and merely repeated what they found on the internet without doing any further research for themselves. Had they done so they would have discovered the painting probably isn’t quite as simple to interpret as it might appear.

I’m sure the king would have been very grateful for the gift of a home-grown pineapple  – or he would have been if he had actually received one that had been home-grown by his gardener. Indeed he might have been so pleased that he commissioned a painting to commemorate the event.  Unfortunately he is rather unlikely to have done so. Yet the legend persists. Why?

So…did it happen? If so, when? Why was it/would it have been important?

Its very difficult to know who grew the first pineapple in Britain, or even in Europe but one thing is pretty clear – it wasn’t John Rose, Charles II’s gardener, talented and justifiably famous though he undoubtedly was. Read on to find out more…. Continue reading →