Edible But Beautiful

This is my courgette plant growing in the compost bin. It is a Czech variety called Wanda, which in addition to the large yellow flowers has sweet pale green fruit and beautiful variegated leaves. We can hardly keep up with plant's courgette production - my list of courgette recipes has had to expand a lot. It is hard to remember what this section of the garden looked like only a few months ago. In the corner of one of the beds I had erected a chicken-wire compost bin to cope with the green and brown material generated at the end of last year's harvest. My husband considered it ugly and he was right! The composting process had not finished by spring, so I removed the upright poles and covered the heap with a layer of multipurpose compost bought for 99p from Aldi. Into that I planted two courgette plants and boy did they love their unconventional bed. Soon the decorative courgette leaves had hidden everything. When the courgettes have finished fruiting, I will c

I sowed my scorzonera seeds last spring and the roots should have been ready to harvest in the autumn/winter. But as the roots were looking pretty small, I left them in the ground. I am glad I did. Scorzonera is a biennial/perennial and so flowers in the second year and what beautiful flowers they are. They rise on tall stalks above the leaves. I was wondering about leaving a few plants in the ground for next year, but the hot dry weather has put paid to that. The plants wilted horribly and so I have just dug up the long black roots, which are much thicker and ready for eating.  One tip on preparing the roots for eating - they produce a thick white glue-like substance when cut or peeled, so blanche them first, after this the black skin can just be scraped off easily.

The garden has been invaded by poppies - simple orange ones and this stunner. With the exception of one poppy plant my sister gave me, I don't know where they came from - they just appeared. I like poppies and have left them to flower, even though they are not edible. In garden centres in the Czech Republic I could have bought seeds of the opium poppy which the Czechs grow for the black seeds or "mak" which feature so prominently in Czech baking, but I wasn't sure about how they might be viewed by HM Customs.

Many gardens in the UK have an amelanchier. It is grown because of its delightful white flowers and vibrant autumn colour. It is seldom grown for its edible fruits, but it should be. In its native North America the plant is known as saskatoon or juneberry. I first came across the berries in my Czech friend's garden. "Help yourself," she said, "there are loads of them." She was right, her bush was covered with red, purple berries. I tried one and could not stop myself reaching for another and another - the berries were and are delicious. There is no tartness or unpleasant aftertaste, unlike some other superfoods I could name. How Amelanchier berries haven't been promoted as a superfood I do not know. They are incredibly good for you - vitamin pills on a bush. They are said to have more antioxidants than blueberries, and are packed full of vitamin C, manganese, magnesium, iron, calcium potassium, copper and carotene. Never has being good for your health

My sister loves sweet peas. She gave me a dozen plants or so, which I have planted in pots to grow up home-made hazel teepees. They will sit on the terrace near to the garden seat, where I drink my morning coffee and where I will be able to enjoy their scent. But this is an edible garden and flowers of the pea plants are already putting on a spectacular show. I don't what has happened, but this year's pea plants are twice the size they were last year. The white Kelvedon Wonder blooms are dainty and delightful (see below). But the stars of the show are the purple and pink flowers of the shiraz mangetout (top). And when they are finished I get delicious purple pods. We had our first taste of them yesterday. Summer and summer harvests are beginning. Yippee!

The garden is abuzz. A collection of bumblebees is clambering over the chive flowers - one clump has six on it. Over on the poached egg plants there are solitary bees and hoverflies. My worries about a lack of bees after the storm have been proved redundant. The clumps of flowers (edible and inedible) that I scattered around the garden among the vegetables and fruit are doing their magic and drawing pollinators to the garden. But of all the pollinators my favourite is the red-tailed bumblebee or as we call it in Gloucestershire the red-arsun. When I was a child I spent many of my summer days at a cottage under Humblebee Wood. It was idyllic, a place of sunshine, adventure and a laughter. It was a place of history with a Roman villa mosaic in a hut in a neraby copse and a Stone Age longbarrow overlooking the valley and it was a place of nature with fossil sea urchins in the fields and of course humblebees. Humblebee is the traditional British name for the bumblebee - humble being a