Brogdale in August

I visited the national fruit collection at Brogdale earlier last month. There are a few photos here, but I have many more to share! It was lovely to see the trees bearing fruit, after my trip in April to see the blossom. The scent was even stronger this time. Orchards full of 2200 varieties of apples = the most wonderful apple scent you could imagine.

If you go on a guided tour, you can see more trees close up and also taste some of the fruit. Self-guided tours are also available, but you have to stick to the path and cannot taste the fruit (not least because you won't know which have recently been sprayed and can't be eaten for a few days). Fortunately, there was no one else wanting a guided tour on the day I visited, so the lovely Tony was able to share his knowledge with me and indulge me as I stopped to take photos every minute! Last time I forgot to take one camera; this time I took two.

I shared a photo of the medlar tree blossom the last time I visited. This time it was in fruit and it looked lovely out in the car park.

Medlars aren't exactly a popular fruit, but Nigel Slater has a medlar tree and sometimes shares recipes, including this one for medlar jelly. He serves it with pheasant, which I wouldn't try as I'm a vegetarian, but it makes me think of an episode of Father Ted.

Mrs Doyle: You do like pheasant, don't you, Father?
Father Ted: Pheasant? I love pheasant.
Mrs Doyle: Well there's a little clue. The thing you'll be eating likes pheasant as well.

Apple blossom is probably my favourite blossom because it smells so sweet. I took photos of several varieties of apple blossom in the spring, including Montreal Beauty. I didn't find it this time, but I did take photos of beautiful Irish Peach apples. I was surprised to find apple trees bearing (edible) fruit so early.

This P.J.Bergius apple is Snow White-worthy red!

These stunning apples are Thortlepippin, which sounds like the name of a 70s children's TV show.

It doesn't look very pink here, but Lady Williams is the pink-skinned apple below which, when bred with Golden Delicious, becomes Pink Lady. After reading this article, I'm not so keen on the idea of buying Pink Lady apples in future, as much as I prefer sweet apples. Adam, who writes the wonderful blog Adam's Apples, has also written about Pink Lady, or rather Cripps Pink (the variety is called Cripps Pink after the breeder John Cripps, but the trademark name is Pink Lady).

And crab apples, beloved of florists for autumn arrangements, were on display too. The first one is called Maruba.

There were also apples trained along wire fences.

You know when they say the hottest place in the UK is Gravesend, or wherever? Well, when the hottest place is Brogdale, as it was on 10 August 2014 (just six days after my visit), this is the weather station that confirms that. On that August day, Brogdale was 101 degrees Fahrenheit, beating Heathrow Airport's double-figures record.

Back to the fruit, and the best thing about this visit was the plums. I got to taste varieties I would never normally get the chance to try, and they were all nicer than the ones I've bought from a supermarket. This was the wonderful sight of two plum trees grown in different ways, hence little and large.

This plum doesn't have a proper name; just the label V72331. I tried it and it was delicious.

This one is called Czar, which would go quite nicely with the Russian Greengage in the taster post!

In April I took a photo of Mirabelle d'Octobre. The mirabelle is a type of plum. This time I tasted some mirabelles, including this one: Mirabelle de Metz. They are delicious and quite sweet.

A greengage that I also tasted was Newark. Sweet sunshine on a tree!

In the spring, I saw an ornamental pear tree that had leaves like an olive tree. Here it is in August, bearing fruit.

And the final tree: Malus White Star. Tony told me a story about this crab apple, which I'm afraid to say I've completely forgotten. If you go on a tour with him, maybe he'll tell you and you can report back!

I'll leave you with my fruit haul: I rarely eat my five a day, but it was much easier after this visit.

A taster post: Brogdale in August

...with a longer post to follow. It's a bereavement counselling day today (which I'm really enjoying, by the way), which means less time to research and write for pleasure.

As you can see, Brogdale is looking very different from my blossom-filled visit in April - not least because I remembered to borrow a camera this time! The photo at the top is of cobnuts (hazelnuts) which are almost ready - the guide, Tony, said the squirrels are clever and are waiting until they're at their best. Then apples, and below are greengages - a type of plum. I was too late for cherries and apricots - I will need to be on the ball and visit promptly next year.

The apple below is Devonshire Quarrande and the plum has no proper name but has the label WJ 106 2/4.

Get down to Faversham if you can and go on a guided tour - you'll learn more, see more, and be able to taste the fruit (which you can't on a self-guided tour, where you also have to stick to the path). Brogdale holds the national fruit collection, so you'll get to see and sample varieties that you would never find in the shops. I tried greengages for the first time - these ones are called Russian Greengage and they were so delicious!

Brogdale blossom: From Golden Hornet to American Beauty

I visited Brogdale for the first time last week, after reading about it at Penshurst Place, and seeing Karen Louise's beautiful photos on Twitter. It is a huge farm in Kent with more than 4000 varieties of fruit tree, and you can visit it throughout the year to see blossom, cherries, apples, and more.

I was gutted when I realised I had forgotten to bring a camera, so these pictures were taken on my phone camera, and they don't do the blossom justice. I did get a annual orchard pass, though, so I can visit again with a proper camera!

I went for a guided tour of the farm. Our guide first took us to the car park to see a medlar tree. (When you arrive at Brogdale, the car park itself is enough to make you smile - it's filled with blossom.)

If you're excited about Shakespeare's 450th birthday this week, you might be familar with Mercutio's bawdy talk of medlars in Romeo and Juliet (Act Two, Scene One). These days, Nigel Slater grows some unusual fruit trees, including a medlar, and writes about it here.

Our guide led us around a corner, and we were greeted with this sight. Ornamental fruit trees in blossom, with cherries and plums at the back, and crab apples and pears at the front. There were mats on the floor for people taking part in the Hanami cherry blossom celebrations.

The crab apple blossoms were beautiful. Here are four. In order: Golden Hornet, Montreal Beauty, Saskatong, and the appropriately-named Gorgeous! 

The crab pears had almost finished blossoming. The Pyrus salicifolia 'Pendula' on the left looks unusual, like an olive tree or weeping willow.

Next on the tour was quince blossom, which has huge, round petals. The fruit at Brogdale is used for quince jam, amongst other things.

We arrived at rows and rows of cherry trees - the kind that bear fruit; not the ornamental ones that we tend to see in the spring. There are 300 varieties! Wires along the top of the trees stop birds from eating the cherries; the farm used to use netting, but tractors and birds would get caught up in them. The old cherry trees used to bear fruit for 60 or 70 years. Now they tend to last 25 years (but I missed out the reason why in my notes - sorry!).

This beautiful cherry is called Old Blackheart.

Next to the cherries were rows of plum trees, including damsons, mirabelles, greengages, and the best-known plum in Britain: the Victoria Plum. (Does anyone else remember the books by Angela Rippon in the 1980s about a fairy called Victoria Plum? I used to love them!) The second photo below is Mirabelle d'Octobre.

We then came to the train line of the Faversham Miniature Railway, which runs through the farm.

The next stop was the cobnut trees. Cobnuts are a variety of hazelnut, I think, although I am not the best person to ask about nuts. I'm allergic to them, and as I'm a vegetarian too, it makes eating out pretty boring sometimes! Brogdale has 40 varieties of cobnut, and the collective name for an orchard of cobnuts is a platt. Squirrels are as much of a menace to these as birds are to cherries!

There were more cherry trees, this time grown for commercial use. Normally, there are just two of each variety of fruit tree, but here there are full rows of certain varieties of cherry.

There were two rows of pear trees grown commercially to make perry (more 80s-love - I saw this Babycham advert on television before I saw Bambi on video).

Then there were apple trees and apple trees and more apple trees - and the scent was so sweet. New apple trees are grown as tall spindles, not standard bushes. This means the farm can grow more fruit per acre, and spindles are also easier to prune. There was a section with unknown trees which the farm is trying to identify, although our guide suspects that many are grown from pips rather than propagation, which means they won't grow into the 'true' apple tree. There are more new apple trees propagated than any other fruit in the farm. And of their 2200 apple varieties, about 600 are British.

These are a few that stuck out for me for their names or their beautiful blossoms. Firstly, the famous Golden Delicious.

Then, the Grange Hill-sounding Tukker.

Drap d'Or is beautiful.

As is Oxford Hoard.

Holstein is a pretty, German apple blossom.

And Parker's Pippin is another beauty.

This is Wealthy. Oh, If I Were a Rich Man...

Forty Shilling is more up my street. I think it is a dessert apple. We were also shown Chelmsford, which is a cooking apple (the only one I knew before was Bramley), but I didn't get a good photo of it.

Finally, a couple of new trees with great names. Bloody Ploughman! Both this and Forty Shilling are included in the Co-op's Tillington apple juice made of 1000 varieties of apple.

And American Beauty. I had only heard of the rose, not the apple. However, I was sent a link to a wonderfully-named apple blog from a blogger called Adam in Massachusetts, and it seems it's a popular apple in America.

So visit Brogdale to see the blossom or fruit (depending on the time of year) and enjoy an educational and beautiful day out.