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  • Amateur Gardening

    Berries that brighten

    Oct 19, 2021 5 minutes

    LIFE is full of compensations. For example, one of the compensations for having a garden next to a busy noisy road is that you can grow far better berrying shrubs and trees than can gardeners living in the peaceful bird-ridden countryside. Farming improvements are driving the birds into gardens by removing sheltering hedges and killing insect life and, alas, wild plants that provide fruits and seeds.

    If you live on a road so busy that it frightens the birds, you can grow the rowans that, in the country, are often stripped of their berries as soon as they change colour. The native rowan or mountain ash, , with orange-red berries, can grow to 40ft (12m) tall. There is an improved form with bright-red berries called Kew hybrid ( x ) and for small gardens ‘Nana’ (‘Fastigiata’), which, at 20ft (6m), is a wonderful sight in autumn when laden with scarlet fruits.

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