Dill Bouquet

The dill the cutting garden grows. Where ordinary dill is raised for the kitchen alone, 'Bouquet' was selected for the flower bench — ninety centimetre stems topped with large flat umbels of vivid acid-green florets that make every colour around them look better.

Set it against deep purple cosmos, rusty rudbeckia or a near-black dahlia and the lime lifts the whole arrangement. It lasts a week to ten days in water, which is more than most fillers manage.

You still get everything dill normally gives you. Feathery aromatic leaves for the kitchen, edible florets to scatter over fish or new potatoes, and seed heads to dry for pickling. It is also slower to bolt than most dills, so the leaf harvest lasts longer before the plant turns its attention to flowering.