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Tree Quince Collection at Norton Priory

To help save our unique heritage of garden plants the Norton Priory Museum Trust has been designated National Collection holder for Cydonia Oblonga (Tree Quince) by the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens.  Our aim is to help save as diverse a collection of Cydonia Oblonga varieties as possible to help horticultural/scientific research and encourage the wider growing of these plants, as well as saving our garden plant heritage.

We chose the Quince tree as it is an excellent choice for a smallish garden.  It fruits early in its life, is slow growing, not casting heavy shade and has an upright compact habit.  Quinces can be grown as open centred bushes, half standards, cordons or fan trained on walls.  They flower later than pears and are therefore less likely to be damaged by late frosts.  The blossom sets a better crop if the tree is protected from cold winds.  Quinces are self-fertile and have few pests or diseases but do require irrigation in dry weather.

Most of the quinces are grafted on Quince A root stock which has medium vigour, like MM 106 for apples.  The quinces should be left to remain on the tree until late October, being picked before frosts.

Quinces have a strong, spicy scent and should be stored separately from other fruits as they will pick up the quince scent and have their flavour spoilt.  Apart from the most common use of quinces for making quince jelly to eat with meats, use in fruit tarts and for spreading on toast, quince is used in recipes for quince paste; baked quince with saffron; fennel and clotted cream; apple, quince and cheese pies, and Aphrodites pudding.  Click here to download Quince recipes (as a Word document).

Quinces probably originated in USSR spreading to Crete, from where the name originates, to Italy and other parts of Europe.  They may have come to Britain earlier but were first mentioned when Edward 1 planted four trees at the Tower of London in 1275.  The Royal Horticultural Society listed 6 varieties of quince in their Chiswick garden in 1826.  In the 1930s, Rivers’ catalogue offered 2 varieties, Pear shaped and Portugal, while Bunyard’s listed Portugal, Apple-shaped, Bereczeki and Vranja, which had been imported from Serbia (Yugoslavia).

As quinces were never popular for eating raw, interest in them  was overtaken by the arrival of other soft fruit.

The 19 varieties we are currently growing at the Walled Garden are:

Borgeant,  Champion,  Early Prolific,  Ekmek,  Hov No.2,  Isfahan,  Ivan,  Ludovic, Meeches Prolific,  Pear-Shaped,  Pineapple,  Portugal,  Rea’s Mammoth,  Ronda, Seibosa,  Serbian,  Shams,  Smyrna,  Vranja.

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