New Herb Plants for Sale

African basil will excel in your garden as well as in the kitchen. To be honest, it’s a bit of a show-off – the leaves start off a delightful purple colour, which turn green as they mature and feature striking purple veins. It then throws up gorgeous spikes of deep pink flowers which are a magnet for bees and pollinators (it’s also known as Bee Basil). Because it doesn’t set seed, the flowers last for ages and are great value in pots, beds or borders.  It’s a vigorous basil and can grow to 75cm tall, so needs a largish pot if growing inside. 

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Cardoon is a stately, statuesque perennial worth its place in any herb garden or wild meadow. It looks like the love child of a thistle and a teasel but is in fact the wild cousin of the globe artichoke. Considered a delicacy back in the day and is still enjoyed in rural Italy, the stems have a celery-like crunch and flavour of artichoke.  Cynara cardunculus needs a load of space and a sunny position in fertile, free draining soil. The striking foliage can reach 2m tall with beautiful thistly flowerheads which are a magnet for bees and pollinators. 

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Bush Basil (aka Greek Basil) is a tough little small leaved variety which is less namby-pamby and a bit more punchy than the more temperamental sweet basil. Ideally suited to pots on a patio or balcony where you can enjoy the scent and leaves, it has a more pungent, spicy flavour and is wonderful in Mediterranean cuisine.  Greek basil is generally grown as an annual, but it is a tender perennial and if you’ve a greenhouse or poly tunnel you might be able to over-winter it. It’s small, tightly packed leaves and tough stem can allow for a bit of topiary, if you’re that way inclined. 

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Vietnamese coriander is an aromatic herb with a completely different flavour to its sometimes, soapy cousin. It’s a staple in South Asian and Northeast Indian cuisine, the leaves lending a vibrant, zesty hand to salads, soups, stir-fries and stews when added late on. The leaves look similar to lemon verbena and it enjoys similar conditions, it also enjoys a long, cool mojito with its mate Lemon V. Quite a vigorous grower once it gets going, so using the leaves regularly keeps it tidy and in check. Persicaria odorata is a tender perennial which is easy to grow if kept somewhere frost free, warm and sunny. It likes moist, fertile soil but not wet and is a great variety for pots.  A cat and dog safe plant and one for a pet friendly flower garden. 

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Coriander is the go-to herb for use in curries and south Asian cuisine. The leaves have a fresh, citrussy, lemony flavour and the seeds a warming, nutty, zesty taste. It’s quite literally a ‘marmite’ herb as up to 20% of people find the flavour of coriander has an abhorrent rotten, soapy taste. This is actually due to a variation in a certain gene, the incidence of which differs with ethnicity.  

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