Our Grapes

The Parthenocissus quinquifolia aka ‘Boston Ivy’ was a mistake. I had been inspired by a villa we stayed in in the Loire near the village of Paulmy. We stayed in the converted stables of a large chateau and the building was clenched in the exuberant embrace of this ‘ivy’. It is of course more of a vine (in the European sense) than an ivy and quite rampageous. How suitable for the extension I thought. How like a French chateau it will look. What wonderful autumn colour we will have. I was vaguely aware it was different from the maple-leafed tricupidata which covered the walls of our family farm. That ‘vine’ produced jaw-dropping reds in autumn – then dropped the lot for the winter.

With some regret and considerable difficulty I removed the ancient ceanothus from its position at the base of the west-facing wall. It had become a tree rather than a shrub and had taken to rubbing itself vigorously against the wall in the wind, wearing a deep furrow in the soft stone. I planted the parthenocissus in its place and stood well back. Gardening is like setting off really slow fireworks. There is a long wait before your plantings take off. In the case of the Boston Ivy the wait was shorter than usual.

Within a few seasons the Boston thug was up the wall and over the roof. It invaded the guttering and dropped swags of attractive feathery foliage everywhere like the hanging gardens of Marchmont. Little bunches of blue grape-like berries appeared in late summer. It proved impossible to keep pace with its advances. My friend John came round for a drink in the garden. He had to part the lianas to get onto the terrace. “Wow! It’s like a French chateau out here!” he offered spontaneously.

I had begun to think I should douse the flames of this particularly successful launch before we sustained serious damage to the fabric of the house. Actually, I had trouble finding the fabric of the house. About this time we had a gift of a real grape, a ‘Black Brant,’ from other friends, with a cheery, ‘There’s a challenge for you.’

I dug out the Bostonian and planted the Brant. I should point out that I have a history of over-optimistic plantings. Around the terrace we have a big fig (Brown Turkey) planted directly into the ground and an olive, a lemon, an orange and two lavenders all in large pots. Of these, only the fig produces sensible fruits. Intense feeding of the citruses this year has resulted in lots of blossom but only stunted produce. The olive does produce tiny olives that eventually turn black. I suppose like Dr Johnson’s analogy the wonder is not that it is done well but that it is done at all.

Anyway, the grape flourished and was much less thuggish than the ivy. I played at viniculture, carefully cutting it back in the winter (nice job for a frosty day) and tying in the shoots as they emerged from the black skeleton of branches in the summer. A few seasons came and went before it began to flower. By this time I had it neatly trained along the wall below the gutters and had begun thinking of Keats around September time.

The Brant does produce blue-black grapes in profusion and they have a lovely pale bloom. They are small, a bit bigger than a pea, and taste sweet. They are full of pips though. The Brant is very late-maturing and the grapes only start darkening in late October. I ‘harvest’ them now, in November. To be honest, it gives me most pleasure when it is cut back to its basic winter framework with its black, shredding bark. Every now and then I ponder whether it should really have been a passion flower or even a Magnolia grandiflora, but it’s a bit late now for more fireworks.