I like my neighbour, and I like my neighbour’s garden, but I also like my privacy. I want to remain cocooned in my world a little longer before I have to say good morning. So I erected some trellising, then searched for a plant that would keep me hidden without sprawling too much into next door. And as this is my world, that plant needs to have some delicious treat and look pretty with it.
I found the perfect plant, as well as its first cousin and another, more distant cousin, too. And, being the greedy sort, I bought all three. Rubus henryi is a raspberry native to central and western China. It has slender stems with just a few spines and evergreen trilobed leaves. These are a soft, tender green when young, darker with age, with a close, white felt beneath. The plant can easily climb up to 6 metres (20ft) if allowed, though it won’t mind being trimmed into place if need be. It has pink flowers that are not boastful things, but charming in their simplicity; they are followed by dark, shining black fruits. Consider it a slightly more polished bramble which is happy in semi-shade or full sun, as long as the soil doesn’t dry out too much.
Its first cousin is more refined. The bamboo-leafed raspberry, R. henryi var. bambusarum, has three distinct, deeply cut leaflets to the leaves, reminiscent of bamboo, hence its name. It, too, has pink flowers, followed by panicles of black fruit that are equally delicious. It grows rapidly, up to 3-4 metres (10-12ft) in a single season, and is also evergreen, making it an excellent screen. It can be trained up a pillar or support, so that its slender branches arch outwards. I’ve nestled mine next to an arbutus tree and will give it a trellis, so it can drape itself from one to the other.
My final purchase I have absolutely no room for, so I’ve asked my mother to house it instead. At the far end of the spectrum, it’s an alpine dwarf raspberry, R. taiwanicola, which was found growing in Taiwan by Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones from Crûg Farm Plants. It grows to no more 10cm (4in) high and forms a suckering mat of ferny foliage topped with delightful large white flowers, followed by red, edible, strawberry-like fruits. Being a mountain sort, it wants dappled shade and gritty soil. Raspberries like to spread via their rhizomes – keeping them in a pot long term will exhaust them. You will not be making jam from any of these raspberries – they are not that prolific – but they do offer delicious morsels to go foraging for in the garden.
