Last year our Sensory Garden within Elizabeth Park, attracted troops of visitors who skipped away dropping lemons all over the shop. This year (with help from our volunteers) I beat them to it. My car smelt like that lemon dishwashing detergent advertised on Telly years ago. But if ‘lemon’ describes a fail akin to a Howard/Keating budget plan, the ‘Meyer’ has risen above its very name.

We often associate citrus with the Mediterranean regions of Italy, Greece or Spain. The truth is the Romans and Greeks knew nothing about lemons. The citrus were introduced in the twelfth century, most probably from India.

Perfumed white flowers with fruit an acid, juicy prize high in Vitamin C, excellent for winter chills mixed with local Red Gum honey, ladled in dollops to offset any bitter taste. Yet our ‘Meyer’ is surprisingly not so bitter.

Sweeter than ‘Eureka’ or ‘Lisbon’ varieties. ‘Meyer’ is the hardiest type, tolerant of cold weather, having a smooth, thin skin, and a pronounced nipple on the end. Fruit is up to 10cm long with a full body, the tree bearing a bumper crop equal to the best Goldwyn-Meyer productions on the big screen. In fact this refined, unique, colossal and stupendous tree makes all other lemons look positively hydrochloric.

With bags of bounty I fled over the Sensory bridge, nearly tripping in my haste. Like Meryl Streep singing Mama Mia on a crowded Mediterranean boardwalk with total abandon.

In Settignano Tuscany, with hedged arcades framing the view of Florence below, in a magnificent Italian garden from the seventeenth century. It is the Villa Gamberaia. There is a lemon garden like no other.

Reached by a double staircase from the giardino segreto (an enclosed garden) below, with sculptured figurine busts of onlooking attendants, mosaic pebbles, elegant balustrades and lovely lemon-coloured roses.

The top of the slope rises next to and above the roof of the villa and comprises two hundred different varieties of lemons! Can you believe it? Two hundred! All sweet lemons from the Medici garden. Our mainly available relic today is, you guessed it, the ‘Meyer.’

Picture yourself strolling about this garden with the opera class singer Filippa Giordana carolling the amazing piece Casta Diva, with backup chorus and strummed strings.

Did it work for you? Or did you fall in the pebbled lake as Meryl Streep pranced past? Whichever way you look at it, the ‘Meyer’ lemon is a scene stealer, with unexpected sweetness and not impossible to eat.