Where are the blackberries?

When we moved here, I wondered where the blackberries were. I was genuinely disappointed not to find any. They seemed to grow almost everywhere else, in hedgerows, along country lanes, at the edges of woods and fields, gardens and urban paths but looking around this garden, I couldn’t understand why they weren’t here too. Blackberries would have been perfect alongside the old cooking apple tree.

I have, uncharacteristically, been patient and waited to see what appears through the seasons, in this garden.

Instead of blackberries, beside the apple tree was a patch of raspberries that never really thrived. Earlier in the year I left the old canes standing, partly because they weren’t in the way and partly because it seemed ridiculous to remove raspberry plants. More raspberries could only be a good thing, couldn’t they?

As the season unfolded, it became clear they weren’t producing much at all. I picked only a handful of good berries from the whole patch, and since I wanted to expand the perennial vegetable bed I decided it was time to clear them.

That was when I noticed it. Amongst the tired raspberry canes was a leaf that didn’t seem to belong. Its shape caught my eye because it wasn’t the familiar blackberry leaf I had hoped for, but something altogether more intricate. Curious, I reached for a plant identification app. It was a cut leaf evergreen blackberry.

I had spent months wondering why there were no blackberries here. It turned out there had been one by the cooking apple tree all along. A beautiful old variety, just waiting to be noticed.

Few fruits are as woven into British life as the blackberry, appearing everywhere from hedgerows and blackberry and apple pie to Ronnie Corbett’s unforgettable Blackberry sketch.

I remember picking blackberries as a child. It was one of those late summer rituals that simply happened every year. I’d like to think Mum did the same when she was young, and perhaps her parents before her. For generations, children have wandered along hedgerows with stained fingers and containers that somehow never seemed quite big enough.

One of my happiest blackberry memories is a hiking club walk at Farlington Marshes, where the blackberries were so plentiful they seemed enough to feed the whole town. I especially remember the company. Picking blackberries with friends was part of the pleasure. There were jokes, conversations about the next hiking trip to Dartmoor, the smell of dubbin on our boots and the satisfying weight of berries gathering in our tubs. The blackberries were the reason we stopped, but the memory is really of being together.

Dad has wonderful blackberries in his hedgerows. I remember him telling me that he’d picked an apple from one of his trees, cored it, filled the middle with blackberries and cooked it in the microwave. It’s such a simple idea, but an inspired way to bring those two fruits together.

I’ve cooked with blackberries all my life. I remember my grandmother cooking with them too. Her apple tarts were legendary and I wish I had asked her how to get them so perfectly sliceable. In autumn, they naturally became blackberry and apple tarts. I especially enjoy the occasional underripe berry, its bright red colour and sharp tang cutting through the sweetness of apples. I wouldn’t want every berry to be perfectly ripe. That little burst of red colour and tartness is part of what makes blackberry and apple pie taste like blackberry and apple pie, to me.

Before recipe books devoted pages to puddings, blackberries found their way into everyday cooking. Medieval cooks added them to soups and stews, where their sharpness balanced rich meat and autumn vegetables. They were eaten fresh, preserved when possible and baked into early pies and tarts as pastry became more common. The oldest surviving English recipes that mention blackberries are so matter of fact. They don’t stop to explain the fruit, I think because everyone already knew it. Blackberries were part of the landscape, gathered as naturally as firewood or kindling.

That familiarity is probably what fascinates me. We write histories of kings, battles and inventions, yet for centuries countless ordinary people walked the hedgerows, filling baskets with fruit that would become supper, pudding, preserves or a treat on the journey home. Those lives rarely found their way into the written record, but the blackberries did.

Maybe that’s why finding this old blackberry felt so satisfying. It wasn’t just another plant to identify. It reconnected me with childhood, with walks and friendships, with Dad’s hedgerows, with family traditions, with kitchens and pies, with medieval cooks and forgotten recipes, with stories and laughter. The blackberry had been waiting beside the apple tree all along. I just hadn’t noticed it.

Further reading :

Blackberry and carrageen pudding recipe Celtnet recipes accessed 29th July 2026

Folklore The Herb Shoppe accessed 29th July 2026

Dyeing with blackberry woodlark blog accessed 29th July 2026

Fresh blackberry Sally Lunn in the vintage kitchen accessed 29th July 2026