Suitable for Containers

Cleanliness is next to godliness even in history. For centuries Saponaria officinalis has helped keep us clean while providing a little loveliness in our gardens. The flowers are an important nectar source and emit a pleasant and intriguing clove-like scent, seducing both night moths and butterfly species.

Anyone who has had the pleasure of traveling to countries such as Japan or China will appreciate the bewildering but totally delicious array of vegetables on offer there. No wonder the Japanese have no problem reaching their official recommended intake of not merely five, but 17 portions of fruit and veg per day!

Spinach ‘F1 Piano’ is a modern, variety with smooth, green leaves. Highly productive, it is completely resistant to all races of spinach mildew and is very strongly resistant to bolting. With these properties it ranks among the most successful varieties for summer and autumn cultivation.

Mexican Tree Spinach is the latest ‘new’ arrival on the veg-growing scene. With a hundred different names including 'Micro Glitter Spinach' - this is a beautiful plant to have in the garden or allotment. Vivid pink tinged triangular bright green leaves with each new set of leaves blushed a shocking magenta.

'Blue Kuri' is a traditional open pollinated Japanese squash that has lovely blue-green skin. This beautiful sweet, versatile squash matures in 95 to 110 days to a convenient 15 to 20cm in diameter. Rich, sweet and nutty, the contrast between blue rind and orange flesh looks great on the plate.

With butter-coloured flesh that is even smoother than butternut squash, this teardrop-shaped squash with an intense, sunset-coloured rind has a pronounced, distinctive chestnut flavour. Averaging 1.5 Kg, they are very early to mature and have superb storage characteristics.

These bite-sized delicacies can be eaten raw in salads, lightly steamed for tender whole cobs or sliced length ways and added to stir-fries. Minipop F1' is a sweet and tasty variety which is very easy from seed and does not require pollination to produce delicious mini cobs.

Texsel Greens is an unusual vegetable that provides an incredibly tender, smooth-textured salads and sauté greens, this fast growing variety has become a popular choice for use as a cut and come again salad crop. Also known as Garlic Kale, the small delicious leaves have an excellent flavour, a mild combination of spinach and cabbage.

Thymus vulgaris 'Winter Thyme' is one of the savory herbs, which are main course herbs used to flavour hardy meals, bone warming soups, and piquant sauces. They blend their essence with other savory herbs like Tarragon and Savory to create some memorable flavours.

Aromatic French Summer Thyme has more narrow, pointed leaves with a bit of a grey tint. The famed culinary thyme from France, it is higher in essential oil content than other varieties and reputedly the most flavoursome Thyme you can grow with a stronger and sweeter taste.

“Black Cherry” is a lovely jewel of a tomato, still fairly rare, they are the only truly black cherry tomato available. Perfectly round with the classic black tomato flavour, sweet yet rich and complex. Easy to grow and disease resistant. Eat them as you would strawberries!

Black Krim is one of the oldest and most popular heirloom varieties, largely responsible for fueling many growers obsessions with heirloom tomatoes. It yields large fruits that are blessed with an extremely rich, earthy true tomato flavour. The combination of the colour, shape and taste is simply gorgeous.

Few tomatoes can rival the Brandywine for popularity, they are grown worldwide. With an exceptional rich, succulent flavour and creamy flesh, one picked fresh at the peak of ripeness, tastes so good that it may well set the standard for what a tomato should taste like.