Ornamental Bed or Potager

Pimientos de Padrón are amazingly tasty, tiny fresh peppers. The Spanish delicacy often served in Tapas bars, chances are if you have been to Spain you have gobbled up small plates of these in one sitting. Padrón peppers can be harvested as early as mid-May when small and sweet.

Pepper ‘Picante a Mazzetti’ produces attractive cone shaped, chillies which grow vertically with many fruits per bunch. known as 'Bouquet di Peperoncini', they mature to a festive, deep scarlet red, and have a multitude of ornamental as well as edible uses. Sown May to June they will produce fruits in perfect time for Christmas.

Pepper 'Little Wonder' has a compact growth habit and produces festive, deep scarlet, conical shaped peppers. Edible and ornamental, it seems a shame to confine them to just the veggie patch when they can be grown all year long in containers. Sown May to June they will produce fruits in perfect time for Christmas.

Pepperoncini peppers originally hail from Europe, specifically Italy and Greece, often served in salads and on antipasti platters. They barely nudge the pepper scale and have a slightly sweet 'tang’ especially when pickled. Mild, tasty and crunchy, they bring many foods to life.

‘Blauwschokker’ produce good yields of succulent, bright green peas with an abundance of red and violet flowers are followed by deep purple pods. Dual purpose it is delicious when harvested young as mangetout or can be left to mature to shell the delicious green peas.

Bunching onion 'Kyoto Market' is an early, vigorous and heavy yielding bunching onion that does not bulb but forms long white stalks with long green foliage. suitable for later crops and for overwintering. This perennial variety splits into bunches as it grows, simply divide the clump to multiply your onion patch.

We have all heard of Nigella Lawson, the British cooking show goddess who advocates the importance of a well-stocked pantry. But the seeds had the name first. Nigella sativa have a spicy, nutty flavour with a crunchy texture, they may be used whole or ground, and develop their flavour best after short toasting.

Leaf mustard comes in an array of shapes and sizes, but if you want colour, choose the beautiful Mustard ‘Red Frills’. True to its name, the attractive and sweet leaves are finely serrated. The fringed burgundy-red leaves add the taste of mustard and horseradish to salads, stir fries and sandwiches.

Mustard 'Green Frills' has attractive and sweet leaves that are fringed and finely serrated with the tangy flavour of gourmet mustard. Use it with other salad leaves to create your own bistro salad to suit your tastes. They are fantastic when lightly steamed, stir-fried or sautéed.

Mitsuba is a classic seasoning that is very popular in Asian cuisine. Used as both an herb and a salad green and added fresh or cooked to anything from soup to sushi. Mitsuba's look and aroma are distinctive, for the herb aficionado or aesthetically motivated cook, it is a great addition to the gourmet garden.

Is it an exceptionally small cucumber or the world’s cutest watermelon? That is the vexing question. This tiny melon has been creating a buzz. Its unique flavour, with hints of cucumber and lime, its ease of growth, not to mention its productivity, all conspire to recommend this unusual vine to home gardeners looking for something new to add to their menus.

Commonly called Malabar Spinach, Basella rubra is valued for the brilliant fuchsia-purplish colour of its leaf stems and veins as well as its mild flavour. The leaves are delicious mixed in with other greens in tossed salads. Juicy and crisp, the flavours of citrus and pepper accompany the succulent leaves.

Malabar Spinach, is a vining type of plant that thrives in hot temperatures, it is a discovery that is a boon for those of us that love our greens but find the warm days of summer a bit too hot for good growth. It can be grown throughout the summer and can even cope when the heat exceeds 32°C (90°F).

If you haven’t cooked with lovage before then you have missed out on a very flavourful herb. The flavour is distinct and greatly appreciated by food aficionados. Even though some like to compare lovage to celery, it is almost like saying that an apricot tastes like a small peach.