The message
from "Gillian T" contains these words:

Hi
I have just found this NG after a friend told me about it. I have a query
about blackcurrant & gooseberry bushes and a plum tree!!! I do not know
much about fruit trees and need help
I have a 15ft x 6ft piece of garden that has got a few buddleas and other
plants but at the top I have a plum tree (3 years old) 2 gooseberry bushes
(also 3 years old) and a blackcurrant bush (2 years old) They are next to
about 10 rasberry bushes (4 years old). Last summer only the raspberries had
any fruit on them. The other 3 grew but did not have a single fruit on them
after the previous years were great. Any ides what happened?

Hi Gill, welcome to urg. There's a weekly post here called abcfor
newcomers which will introduce you to how the group works, please take a
look so that you can find out how to present questions in the way that's
most likely to result in helpful answers.

That's a small area for so many fruit bushes plus buddliea and a plum,
it must be getting quite shady.

Some plants (like gooseberry and blackcurrant) need lots of light and
circulating air, first to make flower buds and flower well, then to get
the flowers fertilised by insects or wind, and then to ripen the fruit.
I would guess that as the plants got bigger, the plum ,gooseberries and
blackcurrants became too shaded/crowded to either flower or get
fertilised or set fruit. (Raspberries can survive on much less light
than the first three).

Something has to go. Or, you need an allotment :-)

The gooseberry
bushes seemed to have been eaten. Is there certain insects that eat just
fruit bushes

If just the leaves disappeared, that sounds like gooseberry sawfly; but
gsf isn't the cause of no gooseberries. If your gooseberries were in an
open sunny airy situation they could be almost defoliated by sawfly and
still flower and fruit.

There are lots of insects that feed on fruit bushes; but you don't
necessarily want to keep all insects away from your mini fruit
farm..many of them are beneficial, in that they move pollen around and
fertilise the flowers that make the fruit.

Janet.