It’s around this time of year that Loafers (that’s Local, Organic, Animal-friendly Fairtraders to you and me) get in a tizz about all the American and Turkish cherries that fill our supermarket aisles. Why do we have to suffer these inferior imports, with their size 14 carbon footprints, they cry, when any fool knows British cherries are the best in the world and the season is in full swing.

I share their sentiments, but while I don’t normally need much encouragement to take a pop at the sourcing policies of our supermarkets, in this I don’t think they are to blame. Cherries have always been horribly fickle things to grow: get too mild a winter, too wet a spring or too easterly a wind in summer, and you can kiss goodbye to that year’s harvest. When supermarket buyers tell me they’d love to sell British cherries but just can’t get them in the quantities they need, I’m inclined to believe them.

The trouble is, it’s a vicious circle. Once the buyers start looking elsewhere, British growers lose their marketplace, so they grub up the orchards and start growing Chinese-style Banquets for Two, or whatever else it is the customer is demanding these days. Sadly, the 7,500 acres of cherry orchards we had in the Fifties are down to just 750 acres now.

But there is a sign that we might be turning a corner. Help, as ever, has come from our cousins across the water. Up until ten years ago all trees were planted on native Colt rootstock, but now they are grafted on to American Gisela rootstock. The result is a smaller but heavier cropping tree, which is more resilient to the weather. Even in a bad year, you’ll lose only 30 per cent of the crop.

M&S has long been a lone voice in the championing of home-grown cherries and remains the biggest supplier, but this year it is joined by Morrisons, which will sell 140 tonnes come the season’s end in August. They will stock eight varieties, which glory in such names as Sunburst, Summer Sun and Sweetheart.

Meanwhile, Henrietta Green, founder of Food Lovers Britain, has launched Cherry Aid to help promote these home-grown gems, and today is the first ever British Cherry Day, when restaurants and supermarkets around the country will be flying the flag. Restaurants such as John Burton Race’s The New Angel in Dartmouth, Barney Haughton’s Bordeaux Quay in Bristol and Jeremy Lee’s Blueprint Café will feature special cherry menus. At the Brogdale Fruit Collection near Faversham, Kent, there will be cooking demonstrations and orchard walks, and M&S will have tastings at many of its stores. You’ll also find PYO farms on www.foodloversbritain.com.

And perhaps in the future there’ll be more enterprising growers like Michael Dallaway of Cook’s Yard Farm at Northiam, East Sussex, where for £30 a year you can rent your very own tree and pick all the fruit on it. Dallaway (pictured above) has 20 varieties of cherry tree over 25 acres, with 450 trees already rented out to customers from as far afield as Wales.

“People increasingly want to know where their fruit is coming from,” he says. “And there’s undoubtedly an educational value for children too. They come at blossom time, harvest time, and even at other times for a picnic under their tree. That’s fine by me as long they give me a call to make sure I’m not hammering around the field in my tractor and in danger of running them over.”

It also makes financial sense. In an average year you can expect to pick 10kg, which would set you back about £80 in supermarkets. Clearly, you have to like your cherries, but as the credit card advert would have it: cost of fruit £30, cost of connecting with nature, priceless.

www.rentacherrytree.co.uk

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