The message
from (Steve Harris) contains these words:

In article ,
(Charlie Pridham) wrote:

but fruit? I have never seen any

According to http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/elaeagns.html

"If the plants are trimmed in late summer (when being grown as a hedge
for example) then you will be removing most of the plants potential for
producing fruit. The simple answer to this is to only trim the hedge in
the spring, after harvesting the fruit."

Istr reading of eleagnus fruiting in Russia; though my memory also
tells me it was e. angustifolia not ebbingii. (Haven't got my books here
to check). That would presumably be the parts of Russia that have warmer
drier summers than the UK.

I have grown both e. ebbingii and e. angustifolia in mainland West
Scotland; both of them flowered well(untrimmed) but never fruited in the
ten years or so they survived; they are not longlived plants here ime.
I've never seen fruits on them elsewhere in the UK either.

I've seen before, some very questionable horticultural "information"
from the same website, re what plants could be developed as food sources
in the UK. It has appeared to me that someone with not much
horticultural experience of growing crops/plants in average UK
conditions, has presented second hand crop research drawn mainly from
continental climates, without fully realising why our mild wet high
latitude climate is not advantageous to crops which need high light
levels or long dry warm summers to ripen. Their pages on quinoa are an
example, (and the advice on quinoa's "preferred" soil growing conditions
is nonsensically garbled).

Janet.