Cherry blossom time

And yet most people associate cherries with the in-your-eye, gorgeous Japanese imports which are so over the top that they cannot be ignored.

The Japanese know a bit about gardening, although many of their gardens are carefully planned with plants grown in harmony with their surroundings. Understated green is just as important as in-you-eye colour; rocks and gravel can be just as important as things which grow.

Until you get to the cherry tree, the Japanese ornamental cherry tree. These wonderful orientals burst forth in April, peppering the landscape with outrageous explosions of colour. Such is their popularity that, seemingly, no street (or garden) is complete without one.

They are relatively easy and once upon a time took the nation’s heart by storm. We learn with experience – while many of these trees are masterpieces of colour, their roots can have a nasty habit of creeping along just below the soil surface, wreaking havoc on paths and lawns.

And their inability to withstand spring weather means that the blooms are short-lived – whipped away to clog up drains and gutters.

Still, you can’t have everything, and before that annual bitter blow, the Japanese can be joys to behold – at least for a couple of weeks.

Prunus ‘Kuki-shidare sakura’ is a name to strike terror into the tongue-tied, but it’s one of the best ornamental cherries for the smaller garden; in fact, many consider it the finest weeping variety. In April, it bursts out in a mass of double, rose-pink flowers.

Its cousin, P ‘Amanogawa’, is a close rival, but its charms are as a column of shell-pink blooms.

Neither, however, have been as popular as P ‘Kanzan’, the gaudiest of them all, with purple-pink flowers which, if left undisturbed, gradually tone down as the season progresses.

But perhaps the finest of them all waits until autumn when it can show the world just what an ornamental cherry can do. P sargentii flowers well enough in spring, but in late September it rivals the maples for brilliant leaf colour – the entire tree becomes a blaze of orange and crimson.