Cherry (Prunus) Stella Patio Gisela 5®

Big flavour from a small tree. This compact Stella lets you grow a heavy crop of sweet cherries in a pot, a border corner or a fruit cage. Stella holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit and was the first of the modern self-fertile sweet cherries, so a single tree will fruit on its own. In spring it's covered in pure white blossom that bees love. By late July the branches are laden with large, dark red, glossy cherries with a rich, sweet flavour, perfect for eating fresh from the tree. It's also an excellent pollinator for self-sterile cherries such as Penny.

Grafted onto dwarfing Gisela 5 rootstock, this tree reaches around 2–2.5m and crops from an early age. Its size means you can pick without a ladder and net it easily against birds. For container growing, choose a pot of at least 50cm and a loam-based compost such as John Innes No. 3, feed each spring, and water regularly and evenly through the growing season. That last point matters because Stella's fruit can split if it goes from dry to soaked. Give it a sunny, sheltered position, and prune in summer after harvest rather than in winter, to reduce the risk of silver leaf and bacterial canker. Fully hardy (RHS H6). The fruit is delicious, but the stones and leaves shouldn't be eaten, so keep those out of reach of children and pets.

Each tree is hand-selected before dispatch.

Available from Pengelly Garden Centre.