I can think of no finer place to be in the middle of summer, with the fruit season in full swing, than here in Kent, the garden of England. And more specifically at Brogdale Horticultural Trust, home of the national fruit collection. For 200 years it has been bringing together the world’s largest collection of fruit trees and bushes. It is simply stunning to wander around the 150 acres of orchards and groves marvelling at the depth and range on show.

How many varieties of apple could you name? I bet your tally doesn’t come anywhere near the 2,300 types growing here. They have 550 varieties of pear, 350 of plum, 144 of gooseberry, 109 of blackcurrant, 73 of redcurrant, 20 of white­currant – even four varieties of pinkcurrant. I didn’t know there was one. You can buy much of the Brogdale-grown fruit at the visitor centre, along with pressed apple juice and home-made chutneys and jams.

When Mark Sargeant and I visited recently, the cherry season was in full swing, and row after row of trees was weighed down with perfect red and pink fruit, each gleaming like a hand-polished jewel. Put out of your mind the usual supermarket toss-up between bullet-like Turkish or American cherries – in Brogdale there are 320 different varieties with names like Kent Bigarreau, Sunburst and even a yellow one – the Donnisens Gelbe Knorpell-Kirsche – that sounds as if it’s escaped from the pages of Hello!. It’s extraordinary to see how the taste varies, from the sharpness of morellos to the luscious sweetness of the Van.

Brogdale’s farm manager, Jeff Clayton, is particularly proud of his gooseberries. Again, the range is stunning, from the super-sweet pink Lancashire Lads and Champagne Reds to the yellow Golden Drops and green High Sheriffs. We were soon risking the thorns to get at the beautiful fruit. It’s a shame they aren’t more popular. Jeff tells us that the main problem with gooseberries is that they are so prone to mildew, but apparently supermarkets are slowly coming round to them.

No such problems with the currants, though. “Just look at those. You won’t see a better sight than that,” says Jeff holding up a branch heavy with ripe black fruit and popping one in his mouth.

After the cherries and currants will come the plums, greengages, apples, pears and quince. “My favourite apple has to be the Laxton Superb, a late dessert apple that stores very well. They have white, juicy, sweet flesh with a very pleasant flavour similar to Cox’s Orange Pippin,” he says.

For us, though, it was all about cherries, gooseberries and currants. But what to do with them? Well, just down the road in Faversham is Read’s restaurant, which just happens to be where Sarge did much of his training before he joined me in London. A quick call to David and Rona Pitchford and they kindly let us invade their kitchen for the afternoon.

David and Rona have a great restaurant there, set in a beautiful Georgian country house. What marks it out is its absolute reliance on fresh, seasonal ingredients. David shows us his walled vegetable garden, where he grows his own beetroot, courgettes, parsnips, pencil leeks, spinach, tomatoes, herbs… The list goes on. I’m sure his chefs aren’t always happy at being sent out in all weathers to pull the veg out of the ground, but it teaches them a valuable lesson in seasonality. As David says, it means the garden dictates the menu – if you don’t use it, it will go to waste in the soil.

Cooking with summer fruit is highly seasonal too, but the great thing is that with only a small tweak – in the amount of sugar, say – you can change a rhubarb crumble to a blackberry and apple crumble. For example, here I’ve served pan-fried duck breast with a cherry sauce, but you could just as well use gooseberries, raspberries or damsons. And the fruit fool is the most fantastically versatile way of using up whatever fruit you have to hand: currants, cherries, raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb… anything you like, all mixed with cream and yoghurt. Fantastically simple, but fantastically tasty, too.

Brogdale Horticultural Trust (01795 535286; www.brogdale.org); Read’s (01795 535344; www.reads.com)

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