Edible Plants You Can Grow At Home!

At Rudding Park Hotel & Spa, head gardener Sarah Owen gives us a whirlwind tour of their own walled garden, designed by Matthew Wilson, and it’s packed with fascinating plants that delight both the eye and the palate.

We begin with tree spinach, which produces a vivid pink powder that deters pests but also looks fabulous sprinkled across a dish. Then comes the quince, one of those old-world fruits that deserves a comeback – perfect for making rich, fragrant jellies. There’s even a pear archway, elegant and sculptural, offering a harvest of fruit as well as a picture-perfect backdrop for wedding photos.

The surprises continue with Vietnamese coriander, delivering a spicy hit of flavour, and the charming Chilean myrtle tree, whose delicate flowers and seeds are brilliant in syrups. And then there’s Sarah’s favourite: broad-leaved sorrel. With its sharp, citrusy tang of ‘granny apple’, it’s the kind of leaf that livens up a salad and makes you smile.

This kitchen garden is more than a productive patch, it’s a lesson in how thoughtful design and planting can elevate the everyday. It proves that a garden can feed your imagination as much as your plate.

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So, we’re back in the walled garden at Rudding Park, my favorite hotel in the country. And this, I think, is the my favorite walled garden. It’s full of delights, which are all organic and grown by you and your team. Just give us a quick threeinut speed tour of the walled garden. Well, what we’re growing is things that are high in flavor, high in visual impact, the sort of things that chefs can’t afford to buy or can’t access as well. Something that won’t last if you’re transporting it. So, we’ve got tree spinach here. It’s a member of the fat hen chennipodium family. So the weed that you pull out of the garden is edible and it’s got this pink inum, this pink powder on the underside that stops pests from eating it, but it’s a glittery electric pink. It rubs across your fingers. Do you use this on a Friday night? Always eat it. It’s just like a spinach. It’s quite mild. It has got that little dryness from the powder, but again, can you imagine that on your plate? It’s incredible. Right, the color is amazing. We’ve got quint up here. They also on the flowers on the fruit, sorry, have got that ingumentum which stops them from being eaten. They’re rock hard, but we’ll put those into jellies and membrios. Wow. The pear arch is looking magnificent this year. We actually had a wedding there last weekend. You imagine getting married under a pear arch. Nice pair. Nice pair. Asparagus peas we do not like this year. We’ve tried them. They’re not really worth it. They’re taste like asparagus. We They taste disappointmently is what we found. The cileria we grow really close together so we can harvest them small so they’re packed full of flavor for the chefs. We’ve got uh Vietnamese coriander there that is spicy spicy hot feelings coriander. Does it taste like normal coriander and a bit more? It’s like super augmented. This is chili and myrtle luma apicarta. So beautiful. You can use the flowers and the seeds infused into syrups. Um amazing for pollinators. Look at that bark. Stunning slow growing tree. Can be pruned, can be cloud pruned. Fantastic for pollinators. Royal family use a sprig of it in their wedding bouquets for long marriages. So, let’s focus on the fact it’s great for pollinators rather than for long marriages. And down the end here, oh, this is my favorite. This is sorrel, broadleaf sorrel. This is the one that tastes of your Granny Smith apples. Real punch of flavor. Puree that up raw, dot it around your plate. It really elevates something like a cod or something like that. It’s incredible flavor, isn’t it? And just around the corner, we’ve got licorice because we’re in Yorkshire. We’ll lift the roots this autumn. We will wash them down, take some of them out, and the chefs will use them to infuse into their various menus. So, as a garden designer, we don’t use very many edible herbs, so I don’t really recognize some of this stuff, so it’s great to get the opportunity to see it. What would be your top three herbs that you would have to grow? I think it’s what you like most of all. So, I would always go for a sage. I would like lots of varieties of thymes and if I could contain them then mint as well because you can always pick it and use it for teas and for other flavors. But the fennel is architecturally as a designer what a fantastic plant. Amazing.