For a brief few weeks in summer, cherries are on everyone’s lips. Plump and delicate, with a flavour all of their own, they are truly an orchard gem because to reach perfection is a matter of growing skill and exactly the right balance of sun and rain in the critical ripening days.  

They follow swiftly on from asparagus, whose good-food season ends on mid-summer day, the very day that the cherry harvest officially starts. It continues through until the end of July – or at least, that is what is supposed to happen. The fruit is fragile; a downpour in a thunderstorm can bring an abrupt end to the season and imports continue to threaten the future of our orchards. We joined cherry-lover Katie Napper at Q Gardens near Harwell in Oxfordshire, who, with husband Rowan, runs the largest fruit farm in the county, to discover the behind-the-scenes story of today’s cherry orchard.

 “They are so weather dependent – a late frost can kill the blossom, whilst a June downpour can burst the plump fruit – they say you can actually hear them popping! I dare not even look at the trees until harvest time.” 

We turn into the field, and there are rows upon rows of cherry trees, laden with fruit. Clearly there is nothing to worry about this year. All told there are 16 acres containing 25 varieties, one of the largest collections of cherry trees in the UK; assorted reds and crimsons, both sweet and sour. It is no surprise that people travel miles to buy them. Katie’s favourites are the creamy blushed ‘Naps’ (Napoleons). “Many people ignore them, thinking they’re unripe, but they’re fabulous!” she says. Winston Churchill was reputedly also a fan, and used to have a punnet (or ‘chip’ as it was called) delivered to him once a year from the farm.  

Harwell cherries have always been considered outstanding. They are fatter, tastier and more aromatic than cherries grown in most other parts of the country, due mainly to the greensand soil that runs through the area. Its high potash level improves flavour, and encourages growth. There are records of cherry harvests going back to the 1600s, but it was just after the Second World War, when the 1947 Agriculture Act boosted national food production, that the acreage of fruit grown in the area really took off. The Act underpinned food prices, essential for crops so vulnerable to the weather.  

The orchards at Q Gardens are now all that remain in an area currently more famous for its links with Atomic research than fruit trees, although there is a nod to nostalgia in names like “Orchard Way” and “Blossom Hill Cottage”. The cherry crunch came in the 1980s with the introduction of the EU ‘grubbing-up’ grants, prompted by the influx of imports from countries where fruit could be grown and harvested more cheaply than in the UK. English apples in particular suffered from the arrival of the blemish-free Golden Delicious, Fuji and Empire varieties. With the market flooded and prices falling the EU offered money to farmers to dig up ‘old’ trees producing inferior fruit. A commercial cherry tree lasts 30-40 years, so those planted at the end of the war would be reaching the end of their prime by the late 1980’s. For many frustrated farmers, the grants were just too tempting, worth far more than the fruit. As a result, there are now just 80 acres of cherries left in Oxfordshire.

In recent years much has been made of the plight of our orchards, and attempts to recover them. Apple Day on 21 October celebrates the apple orchard, and food writer Henrietta Green took up the cause of the cherry two years ago.  CherryAid (and National Cherry Day on 18 July) aims to raise awareness of, and encourage people to buy, native fruit. The growing public interest and knowledge of local foods has helped to encourage demand and farmers are tentatively replanting cherries, which despite (or rather because of) the risks from our variable climate, remains a lucrative crop.  

Q Gardens sells all its cherries from its farm shop and at Thames Valley farmers’ markets (www.tvfm.org.uk) at £6 per kilo (£5 per kilo if you pick-your-own – which has got to be the most wonderful harvest experience ever). This is good value too compared with the supermarkets; Sainsburys and M & S are currently selling imported cherries at ‘half price’ (£5.96 and £6.59 per kilo respectively) – and, in the first week of July, there’s no sign of British ones. Some farms also offer a ‘rent a tree’ scheme to guarantee income, an idea derived from the cherry auctions of old, where people would bid to manage an entire acre for a year.  You can visit ‘your’ tree during the year and give it a hug if you want; when the fruit’s ready every bit of it is yours to harvest. 

The Nappers are at the forefront of the cherry-revival movement, having taken on the orchard tenancy only six years ago. “We went from a gooseberry bush in the back garden in our old lives, to managing the largest top fruit farm in Oxfordshire!” laughs Katie, who works seven days a week to develop the business with Rowan, which also includes a livestock farm producing beef and lamb for the farm shop. Her enthusiasm is infectious and it is hard not to catch her vision, even as you contemplate the still largely confused tangle of pear, apple, plum and cherry trees inherited from the previous tenants. As she points out, this is not about ‘fixing a problem with a piece of string’, but an investment for the future. Many of the old cherries were too tall to pick without ladders, so shorter ones were planted for the pick-your-own five years ago on shorter, more modern root stocks, and the first crop is available this year. The sheer number of varieties makes it easier to see the season through until the end. Katie is pleased that August croppers are being developed. All good news. 

One question remains – even if the blossom avoids becoming frost-nipped, and there’s no last minute rain, or destructive funding systems afoot, what about the birds? There are no nets at Q Gardens, so how she has avoided the fate of many a domestic cherry tree whose fruit is enjoyed by fat blackbirds long before human hand can get there. Katie explains that in the past boys from the village were hired to chase off the birds with shotguns. The modern system is to use a gas-powered ‘banger’ which gives off a loud noise every 15 minutes or so. In reply to my raised eyebrows, she reminds me: “You’ve definitely got to be crazy to grow cherries”. 

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