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Designing a berry patch can be as simple or as complicated as you want. Regimented rows are easy and traditional, but uninspiring: I'm planning something altogether more elaborate, a fruitier version of a potager. In the berry patch in my head, there are blackcurrants underplanted with strawberries; gooseberries cordon-trained up one wall and a fan-trained cherry spreading its arms luxuriously across another.

"Use thin 'Ballerina' pears as vertical accents to cram in as much fruit as possible."

You see, berry patches can be wonderfully decorative. You can make the most of training fruit into fans, espaliers and cordons, adding step-over apples to edge beds and tall, thin 'Ballerina' pears as vertical accents to cram as much fruit as possible into a small space while creating beautiful, architectural shapes to admire in winter.

Symmetrical designs for the layout, just as you'd use in a , are immensely pleasing: lay out beds in geometric patterns, perhaps L-shaped around a central square, or paths heading out from a circle like spokes in a wheel. I'm planning to put a huge container in the centre of my berry patch, filled with ericaceous compost so I can grow my beloved acid-loving blueberries even though I've got alkaline soil. They make beautiful, ornamental shrubs with superb autumn colour and, of course, those smokey blue-black berries.

For all their beauty and their sensual pleasures, berry patches are very easy-going. You can place them more or less anywhere in the garden, even if there's relatively little sun – most fruit bushes don't mind shade, though if you're growing strawberries or cherries you'll need some sunny patches.

"If you're growing strawberries or cherries you'll need some sunny patches."

And they're so practical: you can protect all your fruit at the same time with a netting cage to keep out marauding birds. It doesn't have to be too industrial-looking: I'm thinking tall, slender wooden posts, with copper piping between them and central, higher posts from which I'll hang my netting on rope swags.

With careful planning, you can have fresh fruit to pick from May to November, starting with the earliest of gooseberries: trained into cordons, you can plant four different varieties even if all you have is an eight-foot stretch of wall (and still have space for lingonberries at their feet). 'Invicta' is standard-issue and super reliable, but for the best flavour try red 'Whinham's Industry', 'Careless' or vibrant purple 'Lancashire Lad'.

Strawberries start around June – plant early, mid-season and late varieties to keep them coming – and can be tucked into more or less any sunny corner. They make wonderful ground cover. Then it's berries all the way: blueberries, whitecurrants, redcurrants, blackcurrants... Raspberries can be lined up along the back, and blackberries, tayberries or loganberries trained to romp over a wall or fence.

It's amazing how much fruit you can squeeze into even quite small patches, and best of all, they're all permanent crops, needing little more than an annual prune and a good generous mulch to produce all the fruit you can eat for years to come.

Sally Nex is a garden writer and blogger and part of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Gardening team.

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