This lovely British native plant makes a splash of colour alongside country roads from July to August with umbels which are claret-coloured or pale pink before they open, then bright white and rounded when in full flower with a festoon of bracts beneath. They then produce their intriguing seed-heads which curl inwards making a closed cup holding the ripe seeds before sometimes falling off and becoming "tumbleweeds"! Domesticated carrots are cultivars of the subspecies, Daucus carota subsp. sativus. The flower clusters can be french-fried to produce a carrot-flavoured gourmet's delight whilst the aromatic seed is used as a flavouring in stews etc. Finally the dried roasted roots can be ground into a powder and used for making coffee. ... Learn More

A new and elegant umbellifer with finely-divided green foliage, above which open fabulous, doily-like heads in a range of colours from palest pink through shades of purple and crimson, to almost black. These beautiful, and astonishingly-intricate flower-heads deserve a really close-up inspection. Although they can flower in as little as 3 months from sowing, they do better if sown late for larger plants the following year. ... Learn More

A new and elegant umbellifer with finely-divided green foliage, above which open fabulous, doily-like heads in a range of colours from palest pink through shades of purple and crimson, to almost black. These beautiful, and astonishingly-intricate flower-heads deserve a really close-up inspection. Although they can flower in as little as 3 months from sowing, they do better if sown late for larger plants the following year. ... Learn More

This rarely-seen, multi-value plant grows hairy feathery foliage which is traditionally collected in Crete as a wild vegetable in the spring. The flowers have a delicate lace-like structure which is distinguished by the single sterile deep purple or black flower in the centre of the otherwise mostly white or sometimes rose flowered, flat or slightly curved umbel. When the seeds ripen in the early summer, the umbels curve strongly inwards to protect the seeds, producing a truly impressive and very beautiful structure. An old English popular name was appropriately, "The birds nest'. It is a spectacularly tall plant, often towering to more than 2 metres, the small seeds being slightly flattened with numerous bristles, and remarkably each plant develops individually, one by one, you can never see all plants in a population at approximately the same stage of development! ... Learn More