Berried Treasure

Berries brighten the garden in late summer and autumn. They are also essential if you want to attract birds.

Rowan or Mountain Ash is a favourite with the birds.


Rose hips are full of vitamin C and a big bonus if you grow non-repeating roses and don't dead-head them.


An enormous hip of Rosa rugosa


Rosa glauca has small flowers and masses of hips


Cotoneaster berries will attract many different kinds of birds


So will the berries of pyrancanthus which are beginning to ripen

 

Nice photo's again Honbeam.Makes the Autumn months something to look forward to.

I cannot wiat for what you have to show us for the winter.
Keep up the good work,we all appreciate them

Kandy

 

I agree hornbeam! need a bit of advice tho.....planted a callicarpa 2 years ago, and it hasn't berried yet. it had berries when i got it, am i just being impatient?

 

Hi bettyblue, I've never grown callicarpa, but my little black book indicates that they produce more berries when several plants are grown together. Generally only thought to be hardy in southern Britain and even then they need a sunny, sheltered position. Otherwise, can be grown in a greenhouse. Prune in February by cutting previous year's growth back to young wood. Correct pruning may well be the key to getting flowers and then berries. Do you get no flowers at all or do they drop before forming berries?

 

Hi Bettyblue.We grow Callicarpa or Beauty Berry as they are also known as in our garden here in the Midlands.

Before we moved to this house we had just one bush which never did any good.Since we moved here which is only nine miles from our old home we brought two bushes which were about three feet high in pots.
They are in a North Facing border spaced about three feet apart.

They have now been in for two years and each winter the bushes are full of clusters of small mauve berries that last throughout the winter months and well into the spring,before the small white flowers and the leaves appear.

They are worth growing just for their winter colour,though we did have a Blackcap feeding on them last December.

If I can find some digi photo's we have taken of them we will put them on here.

 

That seems to be the answer then - the flowers need to be fertilised by pollen from another plant before they can set berries. Better buy two more.

 

Thank you guys, off to the shops!