Free tracked UK delivery on plant orders • DEFRA registered grower no. 153094

Rare plants worth discovering

Unusual edible plants, grown to be rediscovered.

Explore perennial vegetables, forgotten herbs and historic crops — including plants that once belonged in everyday kitchen gardens and others you may never have heard of.

Good King Henry

Plant of the month

Good King Henry

A once-familiar cottage-garden vegetable with spinach-like leaves and spring shoots sometimes called “poor man’s asparagus”.

Discover what makes it special →
Grown on a small scalePropagated here rather than bought in as mass stock
Free tracked UK deliveryCarefully packed and sent directly from the nursery
Know what you’re growingHistory, growing advice and uses for every plant

Popular discoveries

Plants people discover… then wonder why they’d never heard of them.

Some were once ordinary kitchen-garden plants that quietly disappeared. Others simply never became mainstream. Here are a few favourites to start exploring.

Good King Henry
In stock12.99

Good King Henry

Chenopodium bonus-henricus

PerennialHistoric spinachEdible shoots

A once-familiar cottage-garden vegetable with spinach-like leaves and spring shoots sometimes called “poor man’s asparagus”.

Explore this plant
Lemon Balm
In stock9.99

Lemon Balm

Melissa officinalis

PerennialLemon scentedPollinator friendly

A vigorous lemon-scented perennial herb that brings fragrance, tea leaves and pollinators to the garden.

Explore this plant
Lovage
In stock£8.99

Lovage

Levisticum officinale

PerennialCelery flavourHuge harvest

One established plant can become a towering perennial supply of bold celery-like leaves, stems and seeds.

Explore this plant
Salad Burnet
In stock£9.99

Salad Burnet

Sanguisorba minor

PerennialCucumber flavourDrought tolerant

A hardy perennial salad herb whose young leaves taste surprisingly like cucumber.

Explore this plant
Skirret
Awaiting restock14.99

Skirret

Sium sisarum

PerennialSweet rootsHistoric crop

A forgotten European root crop producing clusters of sweet, slender roots once prized in castle and monastery gardens.

Explore this plant

Grow for the conditions

Keep your garden growing through autumn and winter

The growing season doesn't have to end when temperatures drop. Discover hardy perennial vegetables, forgotten edibles and traditional crops that keep your garden productive through the colder months.

Explore these plants

The Forgotten Garden

Plants that have slipped out of ordinary gardens.

Some were once familiar sights in cottage and kitchen gardens. Others have long histories elsewhere but never found a permanent place in the modern British garden. The Forgotten Garden exists to keep these useful, curious and sometimes downright strange edible plants growing.

The older site described the aim simply: rediscover rare edible plants, explore what people used to grow, understand why those plants mattered, and find out which of them can still earn a place in gardens today.

Explore what gardeners grew before us →

Growing guides

Grow something you’ve never grown before.

Straightforward help with sowing, planting, perennial care, harvesting and seed saving — including a searchable sowing reference for the unusual plants in the collection.