Jackie French | Time to get cracking and go nuts

I put a polite smile on my face, refrained from saying "I hate walnuts", broke open a nut, picked out the smallest piece I could find, and ate it.

It was creamy and soft without the least bitterness, and I have loved walnuts ever since. But only fresh ones. After three months or so walnuts develop a slightly bitter taste.

Every nut is better eaten fresh, including those that need to be roasted or boiled, but most people in our modern world have never tasted a fresh nut. You need to grow your own, or, lacking a permanent garden, give nut trees as gifts to any friend or relative you think is going to stay in their home and garden for at least 10 years.

Our place is definitely nutty - I grow, or try to grow, every nut I can find.

The best nuts for your garden? That depends on your space and your tastes. Walnut trees are large, the kind of "take over half our backyard" big, though they also have an open canopy which means quite a lot of light comes through in summer. They also obediently drop their leaves in winter, giving you all the sunlight available. Plus, of course, you can prune them, just as you can prune tall-growing pecan trees, which by the way do far better with a pollinator, though a single tree may bear nut.

Canberra is good nut territory. Almonds grow wonderfully - stick to the semi-dwarf self-pollinating kinds, small neat frees with excellent nuts. The downside of growing almonds is that the trees look boring except in spring, when the blossom is magnificent, and for a short time when their leaves turn yellow in autumn.

Pistachio are among my favourite nuts, though we currently don't have any due to a kind friend cutting down both the male and the female pistachio because he thought that end of the garden needed ''tidying'. I have also lost much asparagus, two wisteria, most of the yellow Lady Bank's rose, many daffodils, varied tropical fruits I was coaxing into cropping and sundry herbs to kindly friends who thought I'd like my garden "tidied".

Some plants just look messy, like pistachios, unless you surround them with enough flowers to show you value them. Next time I'll surround my pistachios with agapanthus - the non-weed kind - to show they are valued, and to stop anyone ringbarking them accidentally with the whippersnipper.

"Modern" macadamia varieties will grow in Canberra - they are really ancient varieties whose remnants have been hunted out and propagated after a 100 years or so of nurseries selling the one kind in commercial cultivation. Macadamias are big, slow-growing dark green trees perfect for the back of the yard behind the shed, or as a backdrop to flagrant camellias.

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Hazelnuts thrive here - but only if you interplant the correct pollinators. Hazelnuts also make an excellent hedge, even if they do lose their leaves in winter, they are strong and thick enough to keep out the neighbour's rottweiler or even their Angus bull.

Pinenuts require a big pine tree. I've resultantly cut my pine nut trees down, as a fire hazard close to the house, then found the cones full of nuts and regretted it. One day I may plant pine nuts again, further from the house for my descendants. If you are tempted, allow 10-20 years for a good pine nut crop, or even longer.

Chestnuts are magnificent loose-canopied shade trees, and a roast chestnut is both a treat or if you have enough of them, an excuse for a party. If you're guzzling them alone, boiling is as effective as roasting and a lot easier. The traditional "roast them on a spade over a campfire" method is possibly the most fun, but an oven works well. Just remember to split the dark papery covering over the pale nut before you cook them, or your nut may explode. Hot shreds of chestnut can be dangerous to eyes, exposed skin and your reputation as a cook.

Bunya nut trees are tall, handsome and potentially deadly, as the great bunya nut missile falling from way up high can weigh several kilos and squash Aunt Agatha or a small car, though any stories of them actually doing this may be an urban and rural myth.

But bunya nut trees are big to enormous, and slow growing. You may wait 20 years for nuts, and your tree will keep growing bigger for a century or so. If you have a block of land with plenty of space and deep, moist soil, plant them in memory of tens of thousands of years of bunya feasts, as well as bunya feasts to come with your grandkids, or someone else's grandkids.

The best place for the larger kind of nut trees in Canberra probably is in parks. Could we possibly have a few "nut parks" for Canberra, where citizens can wander among the almond blossom in spring, or pick baskets of walnuts in autumn and trained arboriculturists can use cherry pickers to harvest the bunya nuts before they fall on passers-by, then leave the bounty on benches, with a notice saying how to cook them - roast, boil, or grind to flour and make flat bread from them.

I'm now off to inspect the walnut trees, all 16 of them, and realising that after decades of trying to deter the cockatoos, I would love to see them back to their pre-bushfire numbers, even if they don't leave us any walnuts. Except, maybe, just a few.

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