Crab apples punch above their weight. After providing a cloud of white, pink or red blossom in spring, they’re now adorned with clusters of shiny little red, orange or yellow fruits. This splendid display will continue long after their eye-catching autumn leaves have fallen.

This splash undoubtedly cheers up the garden at a time when colour is in short supply, but, as well as making jelly, you could use some of this fruit harvest as decoration in or surrounding the house.

Everyone wants to brighten up the place at Christmas, but that’s two months away. Ignore the Christmas goodies in garden centres and focus on the here and now. Follow the example of our continental neighbours and celebrate Halloween with a harvest display from the garden. Other Europeans dip into their garden treasures of flowers, fruits, berries and grasses throughout the year, not just at Christmas.

Add crab apples to the berries you are using from the garden just now – rose hips, barberries and hawthorn, to name a few.

Cut long twigs holding plenty of crab apples and snip off any remaining leaves. Spray the little apples to keep them fresh and arrange the twigs in a vase which you can use as a table decoration or to adorn a window sill. You could also make a crab apple wreath, mixing different coloured fruits to create a subtly striking effect.

Golden Hornet is an ideal choice for these decorations. The tree grows to around three to four metres and is crammed with so many small, golden fruits that you can hardly see the branches, even when they’ve lost their leaves. With appealing orange apples, splashed with pink and red, Jelly King sits nicely between Golden Hornet and the largish, deep red fruits of Harry Baker.

The key is to find a variety to suit your space. There’s no shortage of different types in good garden centres or from specialist nurseries. Crabs usually grow slowly, with some taking up to 50 years to reach their full height. But grow they will, so ca’ canny and be sure to prune back when they get taller and wider than you want.

Many traditional crab apples, Malus sylvestris, may reach six metres or more. And if, like me, you have the space, you’ll find they make an ideal climbing frame for a rose or clematis. With their own spring blossom, followed by rose and clematis flowers, and ending up swathed in fruit right into winter, you couldn’t ask for more.

My mature crab apple grows close to the orchard, partly because it flowers over a long period, so helps to pollinate the other apple trees. As an ancestor of all the eaters and cookers we’ve just been harvesting, it couldn’t be better placed.

A century ago, however, it was suggested that modern apples were not descended from the ancient crab apple. The Russian biologist, Nikolai Vavilov, found and identified wild apples in Kazakhstan and he was convinced they were the ancestors of the 3,000 varieties we now enjoy. This idea was generally accepted until very recently. It now seems that Vavilov’s apples may not have been the domestic apple’s only ancestor.

Four years ago, Amandine Cornille of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, showed that crab apples were at least as important as the Central Asian apple, Malus sieversii. Although Asian farmers had been breeding new varieties from the original wild apple for at least 3,000 to 4,000 years, these apples hybridised with crab apples as traders brought them along the Silk Road to Europe.

Traders, along with their camels and horses, excreted the seed on their journey west and the resulting trees hybridised with the native crab apples. Cornille claims her research shows crab apples are just as important as their Central Asian relatives in the genetic makeup of our Cox’s Orange Pippin.