If your bowl of strawberries and cream tastes particularly sweet this year, you’re not mistaken. It is a bumper summer for strawberries, with the recent weather conditions making them more abundant and delicious than ever, according to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS).
Sales and Crop Quality
Sales of strawberries are up 240% for 9cm pots, and the weather has encouraged smaller but earlier, sweeter, and more bountiful crops in gardens. The RHS reports that the weather has been ideal for garden strawberries, as the fruit flowers before leafing over a long period, protecting them from late frost in May while still benefiting from June’s sun. The result has been extra sweetness and earlier ripening.
Other Berries and Unusual Varieties
The same positive conditions have applied to raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, and whitecurrants, with blackberries and blueberries expected to follow later in the summer. Gardeners are also experimenting with unusual breeds of berries to make the most of the sun. Honeyberries, elongated blue fruits said to taste like a mix of blackberries and blueberries, have been particularly popular.
Guy Barter, the chief horticulturist adviser for the RHS, said: “With a changing climate, gardeners are more confident in the potential of a strong crop and seeking out more unusual varieties including wineberries, honeyberries and pink currants.” Wineberry, an Asian breed of raspberry with shiny orange-red berries and a sherbet taste, is increasingly common in gardens. Translucent pink currants, the colour of rose quartz, are also selling well. All fruit plant sales are up 25% on last year.
RHS Gardens and Fig Success
The gardens owned by the RHS are starting to heave with fruit, including figs. In 2024, the fig plantation at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey was moved outdoors after a period under glass, following conditions in the 1980s that killed it off. It is now bearing fruit. Grapes should ripen earlier than usual due to June’s weather, which is good news as later harvests are more at risk from wet and cold autumn conditions.
Berries at RHS Badminton Flower Show
Berries will be the star of the show at the RHS Badminton flower show beginning next week. Delicate, wild strawberries will peek out of the greenery at the Ruskin Mill Trust’s artisan woodland craft garden. The Simon Deeves-designed garden, a celebration of compost and community, will also feature wild strawberries.
Wild strawberry is a native British plant, while the garden strawberry is a hybrid of two American varieties. The wild berries are small and intensely sweet, and were once the only type eaten in Britain. The Tudors and Stuarts gathered them from the wild and planted them in their gardens.
Historical Context
Though delicious, wild strawberries were not a commercially viable crop. In 1822, the RHS launched its first citizen science project to find all varieties of strawberries grown in its members’ gardens in an effort to discover the plumpest, juiciest variety, which helped growers develop the descendants of the fruit we enjoy today. Botanically, the strawberry is not a berry, but an aggregate accessory fruit.
