Easy to manage and extremely versatile to use, quinces should be a staple in any garden says our grow-your-own expert Mark Diacono. Perhaps 20 years ago, I met my first Japanese quince. Dragged somewhat reluctantly to Knightshayes — a National Trust house and gardens in Devon, a hop and a skip from the M5 — I discovered a superb walled garden and an excellent cream tea.
Enjoying the latter in a sunny seat against the house, I caught an arm on something spiky. My wife assured me that Chaenomeles japonica , also known as the Japanese or Oriental quince, was the culprit. Swearing over, I noticed its thorny branches were dotted with lime/yellow fruit that surrendered not even a little to a squeeze, but they did give my fingers the most glorious perfume.
Two weeks later, I had planted a couple and they have been ever-present in my life since then. Unlike the familiar tree quince ( Cydonia oblonga ), Japanese quince generally grow low and wide — to perhaps 5ft by 6ft — flowering prolifically from mid-winter through spring as new leaves begin to emerge, often when still carrying the previous year’s fruit among the spikes. As with Cydonia quince, the fruit are as hard as a hammer, albeit smaller and often rounder than Cydonia’s pear-shaped fruit.
Happily their perfume is of a similar spicy fruitiness, with some of that wondrous sherbettyness that walnut leaves carry. It’s impossible not to lift them to your nose to breathe it in. At first, I thought of Japanese quince a.
