Combining the edible and the ornamental, edimental plants are in our view the perfect garden plants - they bring beauty to your garden, support a wide range of pollinators and other creatures, and offer exciting new taste experiences to boot. Edimental plants often have long histories of traditional or indigenous usage from across the globe; as well as thanking the pioneering Stephen Barstow for coining the term, we also wish to acknowledge with respect and gratitude the many holders of traditional ethnobotanical knowledge.

Many of us do not have time to grow traditional, labour-intensive vegetables, but would still like to grow a little of what we eat. This is where perennial edimentals can come in, as they come back year on year and need much less maintenance than traditional annual vegetables. While some are familiar garden plants, others are rarely available in the UK, and we are pleased to be trialling a number of these - watch this space!

We believe there’s an edimental (or three) for everyone - whether it’s a twist on the traditional, like the perennial leek, or whether it’s something refined, rare and exquisite, like the Korean ‘Beolgaemichui’, which in the traditional language of flowers means “I will never forget the memory, nostalgia, and you”.