Читать книгу Kitchen Memories - Lucy Boyd - Страница 47

One year at Petersham I decided to grow edible annual flowers between the usual flowers we grew for cutting – dahlias, zinnias, scabious, cosmos and sweet peas amongst others, none of which are edible but which were chosen for their cut-and-come-again abilities as well as for their ornamental virtues. I also planted endless roses, the petals and hips of which are edible. My boss at Petersham, Francesco, would walk past me and say, ‘Roses, more roses, I want the whole place filled with roses.’

For edible flowers, I sowed seeds of blue and white borage (which over the years has continued to self-sow), sweet rocket, nasturtiums, malope, calendula and violas, amongst others. My good friend Skye Gyngell loves to use flowers in her cooking and so the rocket was allowed to bolt and flower along with the coriander. Francesco thought this an example of sloppy gardening practice – which it is if you don’t want rocket or borage seeding itself all over the place.

Skye is naturally inquisitive in her approach to cooking and has an intuitive sense of flavours that go well together. Rose petals were stolen to use in salads for the Petersham café kitchen and the blossom from the rosemary bushes picked along with the usual squash and courgette flowers. I even tried to grow caper plants for their flowers and buds but without much success – they need a long, hot growing season. Perhaps some seed artfully dropped into the rough hogging that makes up the dusty floor in one of the glasshouses would succeed. It might be perfectly happy in a sunny, neglected spot; my stepfather, David, grows them in pots in his sun-filled flat very successfully. The plant sprawls away on the windowsill, producing a mass of dense green leaves with beautiful little buds and flowers.