Make a beautiful fruit cage for your garden Last November one of my fruit cages suffered a collapsed top. The curved braces that formed the swooping jelly mould top had given into the elements after 15 years. I originally made it for a step-by-step DIY gardening book. Martin Rodgers offered to repair the cage for me. He is an artist/designer (martin@martinrodgers.com), who is invaluable for my more "unusual" projects. Instead of plywood he made the curved beams by forming a hollow box section mould to the curve profile and stuffed it with glass fibre cloth reinforced with epoxy resin and then polyurethane foam. Now painted, they look like timber and should last 20 years plus. My second version (I have two, both octagons, one with 1.1m-long sides and one with 1.5m sides), we made as a DIY for television. It was made from softwood that was pressure treated with preservative for all the straight bits and 25mm far eastern plywood for the swoopy roof. For each of the eight swoops two of the 25mm ply pieces were fixed back to back to make 50mm-thick curved beams. Once painted with an opaque paint you would not know what timber it is. Marking out the swoops on to the ply and getting them right takes more time than cutting them out with a jigsaw, my favourite part! We used Jotun's Demidekk Ultimate to paint the timber, it has a repaint interval of about 12 years and Brewers in Peterborough will formulate it in any historic or other colour under the sun. The finial came from Paul Procter of Thornwood Designs. Some gardeners are more interested in the filling of the fruit cage than its aesthetics. Mine are filled with raspberries. One of the best varieties is 'Tulameen," which has huge, prolific sweet fruit, on a par with 'Autumn Bliss." Glen Ample" is an excellent earlier summer fruiting plant. Matthew Thomas, fruit expert from Frank Matthews, recommends definitely caging the raspberries and blueberries. Although birds will eat many fruit, gooseberries and blackcurrants are less popular while blueberries, white currants and redcurrants are more popular (in descending order of sweetness/popularity starting with the blueberries). Gooseberries are underrated, some are so sweet they are delicious raw. My favourite is 'Rokula," with wine-coloured berries. Extremely easy to propagate from hardwood cuttings in winter. I grow them as ornamental standards - beautiful and delicious!