The sun shone at the right time but not too harshly, and the rain provided just about the perfect amount of watering. As a result, gardeners, foragers and fans of fruity puddings in many parts of the UK are relishing one of the most abundant, juiciest blackberry crops for years.
“It’s a really good year,” said John Myers, the head gardener at the National Trust’s Ham House in London. “Conditions have been just about perfect. We had a nice May and June when the temperatures were good. June was warm but not too hot, allowing the flowers to take up enough nutrients and the pollinators to do their thing. Then after June we had quite a lot of rain, which did the berries a world of good, plumping them up. In the last few weeks it’s been warm, meaning they’ve ripened really well.”
At Ham House, the team cultivate thornless blackberries. “They’re bigger than wild ones and more tasty,” Myers said. The berries grown in the kitchen garden are shared between the site’s cafe, local food support groups, and staff and volunteers. “We have to try them, too,” Myers added.
This bank holiday weekend could be the perfect time for people to forage for berries in the wild. The Woodland Trust says people should wear long trousers to avoid being scratched and leave some fruit for wildlife such as foxes, badgers and many bird species.
It says that as well as offering tasty fruit, blackberry bushes provide a precious habitat to animals such as hedgehogs when they hibernate, and its prickly stems protect young saplings from grazing mammals – leading to the old forester’s saying: “The thorn is the cradle of the oak.”
Blackberry enthusiasts have been reporting plenty of mellow fruitfulness. Kate MacRae, the broadcaster and naturalist, said there was a great crop at Yew View, the eight-acre site she helps manage in Worcestershire.
The Secret Garden Cafe in Bute Park, Cardiff, said blackberry season had come early in the areas it foraged from and its blackberry vegan muffins had been going down well.
Sarah-Jane Cobley, a herbalist and forager from Long Ashton near Bristol, said her freezer was already full of apple and blackberry crumbles.
“I train blackberries along a fence in the garden as well as hunting for them in the hedgerows and they have been abundant since early August,” she said. “The berries are huge this year. There’s still enough warmth in the year, and probably enough rain, for them to keep coming for weeks yet.”
