One of my greatest regrets about my own garden is that I don't have a couple of hoary old apple trees at the bottom of it. But I enjoy - and covet - those growing two gardens away. Their warm, rosy fruits gleam across the granite walls like festive lamps in the autumn air. And in spring, their branches are in party mood again when they don extravagant swathes of blossom. These are proper apple trees: big, spreading and fecund - and wonderfully suited to these long Victorian gardens.
They are trusty, enduring varieties: Beauty of Bath, Crimson Bramley, Grenadier and an old Pippin. I covet those trees, but even more I would love to have a handful of old Irish apple trees. These are worth having for the names alone - gorgeously redolent of earlier, saltier times: Greasy Pippin, Widow's Friend, Bloody Butcher, Lady's Finger and Irish Peach. And they're not just a bunch of quaint monikers: being bred here, they are perfectly tailored for our climate and growing conditions. Scab, for instance - that disfiguring affliction of the fruit - is less prevalent on certain Irish varieties (but not the luscious Irish Peach, alas).
But these old apples have become all too rare, and have been kept from extinction solely by the heroic efforts of a few enthusiasts. One of them is Dr Keith Lamb whose splendid monograph on Irish apples, published by the RDS in 1951, is still as fresh as the day it was written. And at UCD the Lamb-Clarke Historical Collection of Irish apples (grafted from material supplied by the National Apple Collection in Faversham, Kent) exists under the stewardship of Prof Michael Hennerty. In this assembly of 140 varieties, our pomological heritage has a secure home.
But for those less obsessed with the ancient Irish ull (which will not be generally available in commerce for a while yet), there are a lot of other tasty and serviceable apple varieties that can be grown by the domestic gardener.
The first thing to know about apple trees is that they are always grafted onto dwarfing rootstocks which control the growth in a predictable manner: trees grown from pips may grow as high as a house and have dodgy fruit. Therefore, choosing apple trees for the back garden is a matter of getting the right rootstock (see panel) and right variety.
Colm Dockrell, a lecturer on fruit production and an adviser with Teagasc, is "passionate about fruit": the more we grow - no matter how amateurishly - the better. It is cheering to learn that contrary to what many people believe "the first thing you buy does not have to be a sprayer". Although commercial orchard managers may spray their crops 15 times (yes!) during the year, the backyard crop can exist entirely without any chemicals as long as "you're prepared to accept a small amount of scab or the odd worm hole". Apple canker can be pruned out, while scab can be minimised by removing the fallen leaves from under the tree in late autumn.
Apples are not self-fertile, they need to mate - via a bee or other pollen-brushed insect - with another apple tree in flower. In suburban gardens, a lone tree will almost definitely bear fruit, as there are usually apples (including the ornamental crab-apple, or Malus) within bee-flight distance. In country gardens, however, a second, compatible apple is essential. The early eater Katy is an outstanding pollinator, according to Colm Dockrell. In bloom for six weeks, its flowering period spans the season of many other varieties.
But whatever the variety and its mating protocol, an apple tree is a mighty thing: far greater than the sum of its leaves, flowers, fruit, wood and bark. Certainly, it obliges by miraculously turning spring blossom into autumn bounty, but it also rewards us with priceless notions - some memory, some fantasy - of tree houses, windfalls, robbing orchards, cider-making, heady smells and steaming apple tarts dolloped with cream.