Heritage Varieties

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.

Earlier and hardier than most varieties, Asparagus 'Precoce D'Argentuil’ is an excellent choice for the impatient gardener. Highly esteemed for its thick, rose-purple spears with tender tips and an excellent flavour. In France it is the traditional variety used to create the popular white asparagus.

Black Beauty has long been popular with home gardeners. An excellent quality variety, early to mature it gives and abundant crop of tasty fruits that are clear of the ground. Early and prolific, it will be ready to harvest in 78 days, the sturdy plants produce high yields of glossy, purple-black, pear-shaped fruit.

Considered one of the best by gourmets and gardeners alike, Aubergine 'Rosa Bianca' is a gorgeous variety with a delicate, mild flavour, creamy consistency. The fruits are produced in abundance, have a meaty flesh and a delicate flavour. They are both lovely to look at and lovely to eat.

Lettuce leaf basil is a popular old Italian variety, a large leafed variety of Sweet Basil and one of the most productive of all basils. With very large, crinkled and highly aromatic leaves, it adds the texture of leaf lettuce while packing a tasty basil flavour to brighten up your summer sandwiches.

Sweet Genovese is often associated with Italian cuisine. Basil is native to the region surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. This delicate herb has with an intense, spicy-sweet, aroma and a slight anise-like undertone. It is THE Basil for pesto and a wonderful companion plant.

Grano Violetto is a unique and colourful early maturing broad bean. This very hardy variety is suitable for sowing from October. The plants grow to 90cm tall and are highly productive even at the lower parts of the plant. Harvested while still green, the purple coloration appears once the beans are dried.

French Bean 'Blauhilde' well known German heritage variety that produces attractive purple-skinned pods that have excellent flavour. The entire plant is pretty, purple flowers and purple stems, they produce myriads of flowers from which large, long 20 to 25cm (8 to 10in), fleshy and stringless pods develop.

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.

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 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.

“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.

Chioggia or Barabietola di Chioggia is a globe-shaped heirloom Italian variety. With a rosy orange-pink outer skin and a distinctive dartboard pattern when cut, it is sometimes known as Bull’s Eye Beet or Candy Stripe Beet. Bands of white flesh alternate with bands of pink or rosy red.