The Heligan Vegetable Bible - Softcover

Voted the most popular garden in Britain in 2002, Heligan boasts a vegetable garden no visitor can forget. Its serried ranks of crops, interspersed with cut flowers making a picture redolent of Heligan's heyday before the World Wars claimed the army of gardeners who used to tend it. Today, the crops are grown to preserve old varieties, educate children and to supply the Heligan restaurant with fresh produce. This beautifully photographed book starts with a history of the walled garden restoration, the trials and errors of the last ten years followed by cultivation and variety details for all manner of vegetables: root crops, legumes, potatoes and the more unusual: Chinese artichokes, seakale and asparagus pea. The list of heritage varieties, sourced after years of archival research, contains names reminiscent of times past: Christmas Drumhead, Long Red Surrey, Carouby de Mausanne and Germidour. Ending with a list of seed suppliers and favourite recipes from the Heligan restaurant, this is an overdue work on heritage varieties, currently under threat from the EU and their red tape, emphasising their importance to our society and gardening future. - Lucy Watson

Old varieties of vegetables, saved by enthusiasts from the onslaughts of supermarkets and the EU grow at Heligan. This book shows how to grow them and how to make the best of them on the table.