Strawberry Tree

Strawberry tree is the Mediterranean evergreen that flowers and fruits simultaneously, in October through December, when the rest of the garden has shut down. The flowers are small, urn-shaped, white to pinkish, hanging in clusters. The fruit is a round, rough-surfaced red berry about an inch across that takes a full year to ripen, so you get last year's ripe fruit hanging alongside this year's fresh flowers on the same branch. Native to the Mediterranean basin and western Ireland, the tree grows eight to twelve feet tall with a rounded form and attractive reddish bark, staying evergreen through mild winters.

Strawberry tree takes full sun, tolerates a range of soils from limestone to clay, and once established handles dry summers with minimal supplemental water. The fruit is edible but bland: mealy texture, faintly sweet, and better left for the birds. The susceptibility profile is notable: twenty-seven documented diseases and twenty-nine pests are tracked. In practice, most of those are episodic, and an established tree in a well-drained site does not show serious problems in most years. But in a wet, poorly drained spot, root rot and anthracnose will find it. Site it in full sun with decent drainage and some protection from the coldest wind, and you get a year-round performer.