In the garden this week: Berries, plus silver-leaved shrubs

Fruit futures While you are busy feasting on ripe blackberries and hybrid berries such as tayberry and loganberry, they are working on next year's bounty. The long growths being thrown up now will bear next year's fruit; tie them in to a support, along the horizontal or with their tips sloping down. This slows sap come next spring and makes flowering buds break all along the length, rather than encouraging a surge of green, sappy growth that will come to nothing, fruit wise. Silver service Silver-leaved shrubs such as lavender, rosemary and santolina hate to be cut back hard; cut into old, woody growth and they will most likely die. The key is to prune them little and often, before they get too big, and after flowers have faded, when you can lightly trim the bush all over. If you want to cut lavender flowers for drying, cut them (and do the trimming) when they are at their peak.