All things bright and beautiful: edible flowers

Roses

Roses are one of the most familiar edible flowers.

Crystallised rose petals

Crystallised rose petals are well-known, although you can crystallise any edible flower which has sturdy enough petals to withstand being painted and covered with sugar. Primroses, violets and hollyhocks are also delicious when crystallised and look amazing too.

There are two ways in which you can crystallise flower petals. The first, and the quickest, is suitable for flowers that you will use straightaway as they won’t keep for long. As well as the flowers themselves, you will also need a paintbrush, an egg white and caster sugar.

Pick your flowers and separate the petals if you are going to crystallise just these. The best time to pick flowers is in the morning after the dew has dried off but before the sun is too hot. Go over your picked flowers and check for insects – especially bees and earwigs, but also, especially with roses, blackfly and greenfly.

With roses it is easier to crystallise the petals rather than the whole flowerhead. Pull the petals off gently, and remove the little white lip at the base of the petal.

Lightly whisk the egg white until it’s foamy – this is just to disperse any globular bits. Then take a clean paintbrush and paint each petal with the egg white, both back and front.

Then dredge, or sprinkle with caster sugar – or ‘wipe’ the petal across the sugar. We found dredging with a tea strainer gave the best and most even results.

Lay the petals on greaseproof paper on a rack and dry out in the airing cupboard or a similar warm place for 24 hours – then use as soon as possible.

The second method uses gum arabic, which you can buy from chemists or cake decoration specialists. Dissolve the gum arabic in rosewater or alcohol such as vodka in a solution of one part gum arabic to three parts fluid. You do this by putting the gum arabic in a screwtop jar with the fluid and leaving it to steep – this will take about 24 hours. Then paint the petals with the gum arabic, dredge with sugar and dry as before.

Petals crystallised this way will last about a month.

Making rosewater

Making distilled rosewater is not that difficult and doesn’t require specialist equipment. Once made, this beautifully fragrant liquid can be used to add scent and flavour to jellies, meringues, and fruit syrups. There are lots of rose bushes in the Secret Garden, all of which have petals suitable for eating, but for making rosewater we only want the most fragrant of blooms.

The best rose petals are those from a flower which is past the stage of being a bud and is opening out but is not quite in full bloom yet, and certainly not overblown.

How to make rosewater

1. Put the trivet or brick in the middle of a large pot.
2. Pack the rose petals around it up to the level of the top of the trivet or weight. Pour cold water over the rose petals until they are just covered.
3. Set the bowl on the trivet or weight, put the lid on the pan and heat up to boiling point.
4. As soon as the water in the pan starts to boil, put a bag of ice on the inverted lid. Turn the heat down to a simmer.
5. As the steam rises from the rose-infused water, it hits the underside of the lid, which thanks to the bag of ice, will be cold. The steam will then condense and run down the curved lid in rivulets before dripping into the bowl you set inside the pan. After 20-30 minutes, you should have a bowlful full of clear rosewater, which can be lifted out, cooled and decanted into an airtight jar.

Some notes on growing roses

• Roses are highly versatile plants: you can buy them for the patio, as small bushes or standards, or to plant in the open ground as bushes, or rambling over a hedge or climbing up a wall or fence.
• The flowers can be any colour from white to cream, yellow, orange, pink, red, purple, and that elusive blue rose.
• While new varieties are being bred all the time, there is always interest in old-fashioned roses.
• Not all roses have scented flowers (although I’m not quite sure what the point of an unscented rose is).
• Roses like fertile well-drained soil. You can dig in some bonemeal when planting.
• Prune well in early spring – February is a good time. Cut off dead wood altogether, then cut green stems down to above a notch or bud.
• Prune climbers more lightly than bushes.
• Don’t plant in the same spot where a rose has previously grown – roses are prone to too many soil-borne diseases to guarantee plant health.
• Roses are notorious for attracting greenfly and blackfly. If you are contemplating using the petals in cooking or for making rosewater, don’t spray with anything!
• Otherwise try a garlic dilution spray on the leaves.
• Or try companion planting: chives planted at the foot of rose bushes look very attractive, especially with their mauve pom-pom flowers. The allium scent is said to put off greenfly and blackfly, much as the garlic dilution does.
• Marigolds are also pest repellents, but you will usually be planting them out later in the year (about May), by which time the pests may have got a stronghold.
• And don’t forget rosehip syrup – technically this isn’t the flower you are eating, but an utterly delicious way to enjoy your roses and one that transports me straight back to my childhood.

Herb flowers

Lots of guides to herbs will talk about the need to pick herbs before they flower, as though the act of flowering does something terrible to the flavour of the herb.

In truth, a plant which is concentrating energy on flowering isn’t going to produce the most flavoursome leaves, but what these people overlook is that herb flowers often taste good too and also, of course, look decorative on the plate or as a garnish.

Edible herb flowers include:

Basil

Basil flowers are small and white and taste similar to the leaves. Just as basil leaves go well with tomatoes in salads, etc, so do the flowers for dramatic effect. Or try a pesto with basil flowers as well as the leaves for an unusual twist.

In the UK, grow basil indoors for best results. They will attract aphids for one thing, but also the leaves grow best and most succulently when not windblown or left to the vagaries of our weather.

Lemon basil flowers have an intensely lemon basil flavour and are almost worth growing for the flowers alone.

Sage

Different varieties, eg, purple, variegated, pineapple sage, all edible, tasting similar to the leaf.

Rosemary

Chives

One of my favourite flowers both to look at and to eat. Remove the stalk and pull off the petals, scattering them over salads, home-made pizza, jacket potatoes or potato salad.
Chives are a versatile plant: they grow well in most soils. Once established the plants will grow clumps which can be divided to give you more plants.

They are also good as a companion plant as the onion scent is off-putting to greenfly, blackfly and the like. So they are a good bet to plant under roses or around anything that is vulnerable to aphids (eg, lettuces).

Garlic chives

Garlic chives are every similar to chives although they have slightly flatter and larger leaves, and a distinct garlic tang to both leaves and flowers. The flowers themselves are white and extremely decorative as well as tasty.

Dill

Dill is a fast-growing annual herb with frond-like leaves with a strong aniseed flavour. The flowers have a similar taste, and it’s useful to know that they’re good to eat because dill is prone to bolting as soon as you get a spell of dry weather. So don’t despair, use the flowers instead of the leaves.

Put whole flowerheads into cucumber pickles for a dill flavour and attractive looking brine.

Thyme

The tiny flowers taste similar to the leaves, and are good scattered over freshly cooked vegetables such as broad beans, carrots or turnips. They can be fiddly to handle but try to remove as much green stalk as possible.

Thyme is a Mediterranean plant and likes sun, poor soil and not too much watering. It can be grown from seed but it’s much easier to grow one plant and then divide it in spring.

Lemon balm

The flowers are tiny but bear all the lemon-cologne flavour of the leaves, so if you find you have lemon balm in bloom you can take the opportunity to use them in ice-cream or to make an exotic floral vinegar. They will add a lemony kick to soft bland salad leaves – think of lemon balm flowers scattered over lamb’s lettuce.

Mint

Mint flowers taste as lovely as the leaves. Use the petals rather than the green stalk and calyxes.

Marjoram/oregano

Marjoram butter is delicious. Oregano flowers can be used to great effect where you would use dried oregano: pizzas and Greek salads spring to mind.

Marjoram and oregano are essentially the same plant even if I do associate one with English country gardens (marjoram) and the other with Mediterranean hillsides (oregano). They grow well in not-so-rich soil and can withstand dry conditions.

Lemon verbena

This is one of my favourite herbs for making herbal tea or adding a cologne-like kick to homemade lemonade. If you have a lemon verbena bush it’s impossible not to rub a leaf or two as you walk past and let the scent waft upwards.

The flowers, which are tiny upright white panicles, are powerfully flavoursome as well – pick out the petals and decorate your sundowner with them, or scatter over lemon sorbet.

Borage

Borage is the classic flower to serve with drinks, either floating on the top or frozen in an ice cube. Certainly the blue flower with the black dot in the centre is very beautiful and the taste is reminiscent of cucumber. I much prefer eating the flowers to the leaves, which also taste faintly of cucumber but which I find a bit too coarse and hairy for my liking. With borage you can keep the stamens but try to remove the green calyx.

It’s an easy plant to grow, an annual which will self-seed freely. So start your borage off by sowing seeds direct in the ground or in a large pot in spring. Growing in a pot will contain the plant but you might well find it self-seeds and springs up elsewhere the next year.

Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums are my garden supercrop. The leaves are great shredded thinly in salads, where they add a pungent peppery kick. The flowers are delicious and look particularly striking on the plate.

The seedheads can be pickled in malt, white or cider vinegar when they look and taste remarkably like capers – they’re known as poor man’s capers, but I think they’re delicious in their own right.

Nasturtiums are ridiculously easy to grow – they’re happiest in a poor soil and they like sun. Sow them in situ in spring once the danger of frost has passed. They look wonderful scrambling through other plants such as beans or peas, or tumbling out of a container.

Lavender

I think no English garden is complete without at least one lavender bush. That lovely fragrance that lifts the air as you brush past it – how could anyone bear to live without it? Even better, is a low hedge or border of lavender: clouds of grey-green foliage topped with dusky blue, buzzing with bees all summer long.

The flowers provide an easy and beautiful way to bring the unmistakable lavender fragrance into the kitchen.

Lavender flowers are surprisingly versatile in the kitchen. You can add lavender flowers to an airtight jar of sugar; the resulting infusion makes wonderfully scented desserts like lavender panna cotta, lavender crème brulee, lavender ice-cream, lavender syrup for pouring … and then there is the possibility of lavender vodka, made by steeping lavender flowers in vodka for several weeks and then straining.

Once you have one lavender plant, it’s easy to propagate by taking softwood cuttings in the summer. I’ve never grown it from seed: it’s always been easy enough to ask for cuttings if I see a variety I particularly like (there must be friends of mine who dread me coming round with a pair of scissors and a plastic bag …).

Squash and courgettes

Squash flowers, stuffed with goat’s cheese or ricotta, dipped in a tempura batter and deep-fried, are always a treat and manage to both taste and look exotic.

Each squash plant will produce both male and female flowers. The male flowers appear first and these will pollinate the later-developing female flowers. You can always tell the difference easily: the female flowers have a courgette or squash fruit developing behind the flower; the male flowers only have the thin green stalk.

If you have a glut of courgettes then a particularly showy starter is to pick a female flower + tiny fruit together and deep-fry them together. Otherwise pick male flowers and save your fruit to use as squash/courgettes on their own. Don’t pick all the male flowers at once though, or your female flowers won’t be pollinated.

Courgettes and squash seeds should be sown indoors in pots: two seeds to a pot and then the weaker seedling thinned out once they’ve germinated. Once they have true leaves, they’re ready to be moved outside to be hardened off, ie, the plants are allowed to become gradually accustomed to the colder, windier air outside. Then they can be transplanted to the open ground. They like a rich soil so if you have manure or better still fully composted kitchen waste, dig that in before you plant out the squash. They do have a tendency to ramble all over the garden – if you don’t have the space for this, you can train them up a fence or trellis.

If you have a particularly rampant squash plant, nip out the growing tip after it has produced 3-4 fruits, then it can concentrate on growing these fruits to a decent size, instead of lots of little ones at the stem which probably won’t make it to maturity in our season. Courgettes should be picked regularly, otherwise they will grow into giant marrows and the plant will stop growing more courgettes while it’s putting all its energies into the marrow.

Squash should be lifted before the first frost an stored somewhere warm, dry and light to finish ripening before you eat them.

Other flowers

As a general rule, when preparing flowers for eating, remove stamens (the strands in the middle of the flower which carry pollen), and remove the calyx (the often green parts between the petals and the stem), if large. With some, eg, violas, and rocket and mustard flowers you can eat the whole flowers, but with most you should remove the more indigestible parts.

Hollyhocks (Alcea spp)

The flowers look stunning at the back of a cottage garden border (or anywhere really – once hollyhocks are established, they will happily self-seed all over the place). They also look stunning on the plate. The flowerheads are big enough for you to be able to remove the stamens and green calyx so that you eat just the petals.

Day lilies (Hemerocallis spp)

• Asparagus: you can only eat the immature stems and buds.
• Datura, or Angels’ trumpets: a popular patio plant with a heady fragrance. The whole plant is poisonous. 
• Horse chestnut.
• Some aquilegias (columbines).
• Lily of the valley.
• Most lilies, as mentioned above.
• Oleander.
• Rhododendrons
• Zantedeschia (calla lily)
• Delphiniums
• Autumn crocuses