Kitchen Garden Forum

My praise goes to Brogdale, the home of the National Fruit Collection. http://www.brogdale.org/
I went there several years ago (it may be as many as five) to look at plums for my little garden. I had done some research and when I was there I did a little more, by way of tasting a lot of fruit!
I knew that I needed two trees, they had to be small and prepared as fans so that they might go against two garden walls (facing more or less east and south).
After a tour, I sat down with one of their staff and explained what I was looking for in an ideal world; my list read like this:
two different varieties
must cross-pollinate
fan trained
different colours
one cooker, one sweet
and I would like them to ripen at different times.
In other words, must pollinate each other but should be as different as possible in every other way!

They came up trumps, filling everyone of my requirements. I have the well known "Czar" which is purple, nominally a cooker but is very sweet to my taste and quite delicious straight from tree to mouth . This was picked several weeks ago and harvested heavily.
Today, I was out looking at the other "Coe's Golden Drop" and it is laden with fruit which is just coming to ripeness.

And because it is offering such wonderful looking fruit, I thought that I should tell everyone what a great service is available from Brogdale.

Hooray for Brogdale, and everyone who appreciates proper fruit trees. And hooray for a great year for plums and my favourites, greengages.

BTTT because I left the title deliberately wide so that others might give praise to other people or organisations who have done especially well. I was wondering who you have found especially helpful or extraordinarily wise or who have gone out of their way to do you a good turn.