Totally tropical

I FIRST grew pineapple guava, also called feijoa (Acca or Feijoa sellowiana) almost a quarter of a century ago, when there were few nurseries stocking them.

- Mark Diacono

I had read about their looks, their evergreen presence, the likelihood of one of the best edible flowers, and—in the best of conditions—the possibility of fruit. Happily, pineapple-guava plants are much easier to come by now and they’re increasingly common in gardens private and public. Garden designer James Alexander-Sinclair has used them to wonderful effect at Kestle Barton Gallery, Gardens and Farmstead in Cornwall and, although I would never encourage you to go scrumping in such a place, I saw them flourishing fruitfully at RHS Hyde Hall in Essex last autumn.

An evergreen shrub, pineapple guava is a relative of the tropical guava and native to the extreme south of Brazil, western Paraguay, northern Argentina and Uruguay, where it appears wild in the mountains. It is grown commercially and in domestic gardens of South America, in temperate areas of India, south and western Europe, in New Zealand, California and in the former USSR country Georgia.