Recently Dr Mark O’Connor, a rare fruits grower in his suburban back garden in O’Connor, hosted a visit of Dr Glowinski and his son Joel Glowinski to Canberra. I was invited to meet them at the National Arboretum Canberra. The trio, with young arborist Cole Neering, had been to the orchard of Dr Jonathan Banks in Pialligo and they visited the historic espaliered fruit trees at the Fetherston Gardens in Weston.

After morning tea in the Village Centre, we headed up to Dairy Farmers Hill and, on its western side, Louis climbed down the slope like a mountain goat to get a close-up inspection of the jelly palms (butia capitata) in Forest 59. We drove past the Ginkgo trees (Forest 27) which are Louis’ favourite ornamental tree. When the stinky pulp is removed from its pale pink/yellow fruit on female trees, the nuts inside can be boiled in their shells for 20 minutes, then eaten.

From there we drove round to Forest 3 for them to inspect the fig trees. Most of the fruit had been legally harvested and turned into preserves by the Friends’ Harvesting Group but there were still late crops of green fig varieties which were ripening.

It was Forest 8, the Japanese dogwoods (cornus kousa) which held particular interest for Louis.

The odd pink/red fruits had been ripening for weeks and I had been sampling them, straight off the tree in a friend’s garden in Red Hill. Those that were almost overripe tasted best, as did fruit from branches near the top of her large tree. At the Arboretum a few of us picked buckets full of the fruit and two of the Harvesting Group turned them into preserves for sale at our friends’ stall to raise funds for the Arboretum.

Janet Kay made dogwood jelly and Larraine Nicholls made a fruit glaze (recipe follows). They both found that the result did not set firmly and further research shows that, with bletted fruit (medlars and dogwoods) for added pectin, it is good to include about a quarter of firm unripe fruit, plus a few lemons for juice and a couple of small sharp tart apples.

The plant which was Louis’ introduction to rare fruit was the feijoa and it is still one of his favourites. Mark O’Connor is similarly obsessed with feijoa and, through this column a decade ago, we sought details of suburban trees from readers. This season, a tree in a Latham home garden has produced 100 kilograms of fruit, and another beauty in Yass has produced 230 kilograms of feijoas.

Mark, Louis, Joel and Cole all visited the Lindsay Pryor National Arboretum to inspect the rows of feijoas planted there with permission of the National Capital Authority. They were raised by Mark from tree cuttings taken from The Canberra Times Kitchen Garden readers.

Many Canberra and district Kitchen Gardeners are members of The Diggers Club in Melbourne, which is currently celebrating 40 years of supplying mainly heirloom vegetable seeds and dwarf fruit trees to Australians. Their latest magazine Autumn Garden 2018 includes a story written by horticulturist Marcelle Swanson about the fruit trees, many of them sub-tropical, vines and perennials in Louis’ Melbourne home garden, all of which produce edible fruit, shoots and roots.

Larraine's Dogwood Glaze

This recipe evolved in Larraine’s kitchen when she had a bucket full of ripe fruit from cornus kousa from the National Arboretum picked by the Harvesting Group. She had hoped to produce a jelly similar to crabapple. Wobbly but set. Hers was viscous, but not set. She didn’t want to boil it to death. Hence the resulting glaze which she thought was suitable for lamb, duck or pork. One bucket of fruit made 20 jars.

Cover the whole fruit with water and boil until soft. Squish with a potato masher to extract pulp roughly. Drain in a muslin bag hung over a bowl. Use the liquid with an equal quantity of sugar and boil until setting (slightly) is reached, adding the juice of two lemons. Bottle into hot, sterilised jars. Larraine says it appeared to be setting during testing on a cold plate in the freezer but, on bottling, it cooled into a glaze-like consistency, perfect for pork, duck or lamb.