Horticulture, says Sarah Raven, one of the UK’s best-loved gardeners, can be almost as capricious as fashion. What’s in vogue today could quite easily be on the compost heap tomorrow.
Take hydrangeas, for example. Long considered the frumpiest of shrubs, they are now, according to Sarah, having a moment. “Girliness is back in fashion,” she explains, between potting workshops at Oxleaze Barn, Gloucestershire – a class she’s led for the better part of 20 years (and which she now co-hosts with her protégé, florist and author Arthur “Chicken Boy” Parkinson).
“Instagram has had a real effect on the look and feel of what plants are in favour because, in the same way that men dominate food and design, women dominate floristry. And so hydrangeas, with their lacy, whimsical femininity, suddenly fulfil that role perfectly.” It’s worth taking note.
As an award-winning author and broadcaster, Sarah has become something of a green-fingered trendsetter, especially among those who like to mix their edibles with their ornamentals or perhaps lean towards a more relaxed style of planting.
Perch Hill Farm, her home in East Sussex, has become the flagship for her brand of bold and brilliant gardening. It’s here that she trials everything for her eponymous online nursery business, and where thousands of budding horticulturalists head year after year (perennially, even) to learn about succession planting, flower arranging and sustainable floristry.
Sarah’s style of gardening might not be for everyone – “We get letters of complaint saying that Perch Hill is a bloody shambles,” she laughs – but it’s exactly to our taste. It’s tulips from Sarah’s Tudor Rose collection that you’ll see around the grounds of many of THE PIGs, among other flowers grown from her bulbs, and we’ve planted her seeds – kale, tomato, courgette, beetroot and basil – in a number of our Kitchen Gardens.
“A friend of mine, [gardener and food writer] Mark Diacono, helped with the planting at THE PIG-near Bath, and I remember walking into the gardens and seeing these otherworldly kalettes, also known as flower sprouts,” Sarah recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, they obviously know what they’re doing here,’ because I thought I was the only person in England growing them. I heard about them from an amazing Belgian seed grower called Peter Bauwens.”
One of the beauties of kalettes, says Sarah, is that they’re a wonderful example of a vegetable that is still relatively difficult to buy, but incredibly easy to grow – and this is very often the case with edible flowers, too.
“We eat with our eyes,” she says, “so flowers can really help to make a dish look pretty. But I think they also help to visualise this idea of garden to plate – you know they’ll have been grown nearby. At Perch Hill, every month we’ll have five or six different edible flowers: some sweet, some savoury.”
Dahlias, she says, can add “real razzmatazz” to a salad, nasturtiums offer a wonderful pepperiness and ‘White Valley’ tulips, which taste “halfway between a cucumber and a bean”, can offer a delicious crunch.
“I used to chat with [chef Yotam] Ottolenghi, and about 15 years ago, I specifically remember him saying he purposely avoided using edible flowers because they were ‘far too wine bar’ for his taste,” she says – though we’re not sure whether or not he’d still feel that way in 2025. “Sometimes these things are merely a matter of fashion.”
She certainly welcomes the return of the popularity of the kitchen garden, something we’ve long been advocates of at our PIGs. “It’s the result of a greater interest in real food,” says Sarah. “Slow food was a buzzword several years ago, but then it faded away somewhat.”
From food to flowers, “caring about provenance is not elitist, and it’s no longer perceived as elitist,” says Sarah. “It’s essential.”
See Sarah’s Tudor Rose bulbs in bloom across many of our PIG Kitchen Gardens, every day at 11am on our free Kitchen Garden tours. For info on open days at Perch Hill and more, visit sarahraven.com
