Illustration: Ribis Gooseberries en Pomona by Wendell Severeyns, 1876
Written by Eileen Woodford
As the Shirley-Place gardens emerge from the winter, our executive director, Suzy Buchanan, is delighting in rediscovering its contents, one unfurling plant at a time. Yesterday, she wrote to the governors about the blossom-laden gooseberry and currant bushes in the lower orchard and sent a picture of them, saying that it’s hard to tell the difference between them when not in fruit. That sparked a rather rapid and snarky response back from me saying: “Ha ha! Gooseberries have HUGE, SHARP thorns that will puncture your skin and make you cry, while currants may be scratchy, but are not so bloodthirsty.” Not only that, but gooseberries are viciously hegemonistic and will spread all over the place if you let them. Currants, on the other hand, love to show off their vigorous growth in the right conditions but aren’t thoughtless colonizers of one’s garden patch.
So, why would we find the botanical version of Genghis Kahn in the Shirley-Place garden?
Eighteenth and 19th-century gardens in both the United States and the United Kingdom abounded with plants that we would now consider curiosities: elderberries, quinces, currants and gooseberries. While still popular in some parts of Europe and the UK, these fruits have gone out of fashion in the US. Aside from currants, it takes a lot of effort to prepare these fruits to make them edible, never mind the technique required to make them truly delicious. Elderberries, on their own, are slightly toxic and have to gently cooked before becoming the exquisite syrup of legend. Then, to make it even more difficult, they leave behind a gross, slimy mess that is hard to clean out of one’s food mill. Raw quinces are so astringent that they feel like they will corrode the enamel off one’s teeth. The key to bringing out their magic is to cook them for a long time over low heat. And, gooseberries, as we know, are bloodthirsty. One has to be fully armored with long, impenetrable sleeves and thick gardening gloves in the middle of the July heat to be able to reach into the bush and harvest the fruit. Then, the berry itself has to have its fuzz removed from the skin and have its little tail removed. All of this before actually making the berries into something that one can eat – a process that involves vast quantities of sugar. The result of all the pain and effort, however, is a divine array of jams, fools and crumbles. More about these in a later post.
Despite all the barriers that gooseberry bushes present, gooseberries developed their own devoted following from the late 18th and 19th centuries both here and in England, to the point where gooseberry societies popped up on both sides of the Atlantic. Amateur gardeners and professionals alike developed and propagated new varieties. But for the societies, cultivating the largest gooseberry possible became their focus, and the weighing of the fruit at the end of the season became quite competitive. Society officers carefully calculated the weight of the fruit on precise metal scales using drams and grains to determine the winner.
Knowing Madame Eustis’ enthusiasm for gardening, her friendship with the likes of Enoch Bartlett (of pear fame), and her deep involvement in the founding of what is now the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, it would be hard to imagine that she did not have gooseberries in her garden. However, we don’t have any evidence yet of whether Madame Eustis threw herself into the stiff competition of the gooseberry societies.
What happened that gooseberries lost their popularity to become almost unknown?
The end came rather suddenly, and it was the societies and growers themselves that brought it about. By the end of the 19th-century and in the first years of the 20th, enthusiasts from both sides of the Atlantic began sending cuttings to each other. The result was devastating for cultivators in both the US and in the UK. A form of mildew was inadvertently introduced into the UK in 1905 destroying commercial gooseberry cultivation. Then, in 1911, the US government banned the cultivation of both currants and gooseberry bushes because they served as an intermediary host of white pine blister rust which threatened the timber industry. Over the 20th century, horticulturalists in the US developed new disease-resistant varieties, and in 1966, the federal government left it up to the states to allow reintroduction. New York became the first state to do so in 2003. White pine blister rust remains a serious concern in Massachusetts, however, and towns (not Boston) may still prohibit the planting of gooseberries and currants without a control area permit. The irony of what became of the gooseberries and what we are in the midst of today is pointed.
It’s hard to say whether gooseberries in the household garden will ever make a comeback in the US. They require time and vigilance in the garden and time and vigilance in the kitchen. Maybe – maybe – that some of us will rediscover the joy of taking the time to care for and prepare the fruits of those old curiosities that were once so part of the American garden.