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Loved for their excellent flavour, colour and versatility, Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco, whose pink-stippled beauty makes one dream of summer days, sitting on a shaded terrace shelling them ready for a quick supper, knowing they need nothing but a quick boil and lick of olive oil; a pure fast pleasure when fresh.

Italy's noble bean grows in cream and claret flecked pods, it is a lovely tasting and strikingly beautiful bean. A dwarf variety growing to just 60cm, Borlotto Suprema is suitable where space is limited, in containers on balconies or as a border plant in small gardens.

French Bean 'Red Swan' is an heirloom stringless bean with burgundy red pods. The plants grow up to around 50cm tall and are highly productive, with good flavour the beans mature in just 50 to 60 days. For a regular and steady supply of beautiful beans, sow a few seeds every couple of weeks, from April to July.

French Bean 'Gordonia' is a beautiful extra fine, dwarf or Bush Bean that produces slender, dark green pods that have good texture and taste and are tender enough to eat raw. They mature just 8 to 10 weeks from sowing, are very easy to grow and give superb yields for a small amount of space, outlay and effort.

‘Purple Queen’ French beans are the sort of fun, sassy crop every stylish gardener wants to grow in their good-looking veg plot. They race up their supports, burst into shocking magenta flower, and then produce hundreds of gorgeous regal purple beans which are a pure pleasure to eat.

Very reliable even in variable conditions, Dwarf French Bean seeds 'Tendergreen' is a medium long pencil podded type that produces good yields of medium sized, 15cm pods that have good texture and taste. Very easy to grow, they give superb yields for a small amount of space, outlay and effort.

Blue Lake is a classic choice for early beans of highest quality eating. A wonderfully prolific French climbing bean that does well even in adverse weather, the dark green pods remain stringless and fibreless at all stages of growth. They are tender and rich, and filled with white seeds that are of incomparable 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.

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.

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.

Runner beans are all attractive enough for flower gardens or patios, but the 'Sunset Runner Bean' is in a class by itself. The luminous peach to shell-pink blossoms are absolutely beautiful and will look equally at home in your vegetable plot or your flower borders. The pods are fleshy, straight, smooth, and almost stringless when young.

Beetroot Bikores produces smooth-skinned red roots with dark-red flesh, it is a fairly sweet beetroot with a full and rounded flavour and has consistently been one of the highest ranking beetroot in taste tests. It is resistant to bolting and suitable for early sowing under cloches and for maincrop use.

Beetroot 'Boston' is an excellent improved Boltardy selection. The round roots have a smooth skin and good internal colour and texture. Slow bolting, it is ideal for early sowings, this maincrop variety can be sown from early March right through to late August.

Detroit 2 Crimson Globe or Rote Ruben is a popular improved Detroit globe beetroot. It is a classic, main-crop beetroot which produces excellent quality, smooth skinned beets with strong skin and ox-blood flesh colour. It is recommended as a good cultivar to use for succession sowings.

“The old Egyptian turnip or flat-rooted beetroot has the best flavour but is scarce.” Bob Flowerdew. Beetroot 'Flat of Egypt’ is a very old heritage variety that produces smooth skinned roots, often heart-shaped, with a deep red, tender and flavoursome flesh.