Edible Flowers

These easy to grow chives are one of the famous fines herbes of French cuisine. Easily raised from seed, they are perennial bulbs that spread to form neat tufted clumps, ideal for edging beds and paths. They are particularly attractive when in flower and are a favourite of bees and other pollinating insects.

‘Fine-leaved’ chives have a delicious, mild onion flavour. They keep their slender shape and do not get course or tough with age. The narrow linear leaves are snipped and used primarily fresh, stirred into uncooked foods, such as soft cheeses or salads.

Camomile is a most useful plant. It can be used to make beautiful lawns and raised beds, an infusion of the plant is an ideal family remedy, calming and sedative, perfect for restlessness or travel sickness, while for gardeners the tea is effective as a spray to prevent 'damping-off' of seedlings

Cheerful and bright, use Calendula in beds, borders or containers. Calendula is prolific and durable, and like most hardy annuals it is easy to grow, simply sow where it is to flower. It is currently one of the top herbs used for medicinal use. Sprinkle salads and decorate cakes with the edible tangy petals.

Borage is one of the most reliable sources of blue flowers, often flowering lavishly for weeks after sowing. The beautiful blue star-shaped flowers are edible and very important for bees, providing pollen and nectar in prodigious amounts.

The herb borage is a well known annual with beautiful blue flowers. Not so well known and not often written about is the equally beautiful form 'alba' which boast pure white, perfectly star-shaped flowers. This mixed pack of seeds gives both blue and white forms.

The herb borage is a well known annual. Not so well known is the equally beautiful form 'alba' which boast pure white, perfectly star-shaped flowers. Each flower is centred by five black stamens which heighten the drama. The flowers are edible, garden visitors can be converted to herbal advocates simply by offering a taste of its white flower.

When I was young and idle, I’d dream of a self-refilling pint of cider. Now I’m older I dream of the slightly more realistic horticultural equivalent: beans and plenty of them. Bred for high yields and reliability, ‘Streamline’ gives heavy yields of fantastic tasty pods giving you effortless food for weeks.

An improved selection of this well known and much loved variety, Runner Bean 'Painted Lady' is well know, as much for its astonishing bicolour, coral red and creamy white blooms as for the superior beans produced. The beans are deliciously thick and meaty with a sweet balanced flavour.

Runner Bean ‘Mergoles' produces decorative clear white blooms and white beans. This high quality variety sets well in almost all conditions and produces abundant yields of delicious, stringless, fleshy pods, which can be eaten fresh or frozen, or left on the plants to mature and harvest the mature creamy white seeds.

Large and tasty heads of green buds have made Green Globe one of the most popular varieties of Artichoke. They are perennial plants and will produce more heads with each successive year. This old heirloom variety is a great delicacy, steam or boil and serve with melted lemon butter or hollandaise sauce.

Angelica archangelica is a majestic plant that deserves a prominent position at the back of a border or in a wild part of the garden. All parts of the aromatic plant have culinary or medicinal uses, but it is best known for its candied stems, used as a cake decoration.