Piccolo offers botanical cadeaux and seeds for contemporary gardens. Includes vegetables, fruits, edible flowers and herbs for the home and urban farmers. Alpine Strawberry The Baron von Solemacher alpine strawberry is an antique German variety that yields dainty clusters of deep red, sweet and juicy berries, which can be up to 25 mm in diameter. Clear Crystal Pansy Pansy is now a very popular flower, but its story only began in the early 1800s, when a couple of English nobles and their gardeners began crossing various species of viola to create a new flower with unique colour combinations and increased flower sizes. Genovese Basil is perhaps the most famous sweet basil variety in the world. Known for its use in pesto, its round leaves are dark green and appear more matte than those of its shinier cousin, Common Basil. Thai Basil is a spicy, anise-liquorice flavoured basil. Thai Basil is widely used in the cuisines of Southeast Asia, including Thai, Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian cuisines. Shiso, also known as ‘Japanese Basil’, raises a question with all who taste it: is it a basil or a mint? Neither one nor the other, Shiso has a unique taste that is hard to describe. Some say it’s ‘citrusy’, while others call it ‘herbaceous’ – and others still call it ‘sweet’! What is undisputable is that it can be used to give flavour and colour to many different Japanese dishes, from umeboshi to sushi and sashimi. Common Peppermint Mentha x Piperita is a natural hybrid of Mentha spicata and Mentha aquatica. Its dark, green leaves have a characteristic sweetish, strong scent and an aromatic, warm, pungent taste, with a cooling aftertaste. Wildfire/Wasabi is a perennial variety of Wild Rocket, with deep green, serrated foliage that makes an attractive garnish for any dish and mesclun-style salad. An alternative to the usual Rocket, Wild Rocket has a distinctive wasabi taste and its young leaves can be picked in succession. The leaves impart a real “wow factor” on the tongue. Golden Berry Cape Gooseberry is a nightshade plant native to Brazil that is actually closer to a tomato than a berry. Its delicious yellow-orange fruit, wrapped inside a peculiar paper - or lantern-like cape, can be considered a sweet version of the cherry tomato, with a sour note that reminds one of a cranberry. Erfurter Orangefarbige is a variety of calendula bred specifically for its medicinal virtues. Although the whole plant has long been used as a culinary and medicinal herb, the bright orange flowers alone are recommended for kitchen use today, since the leaves are very bitter. The flowers are mild tasting and slightly sweet, and can be used both in savoury and sweet dishes – the nickname ‘pot marigold’ comes from its popular use in the soup pot. When dried, its petals, which have been called ‘poor man’s saffron’, can be used to create a natural dye or, funnily enough, in chicken feed to make egg yolks extra vibrant! Indigo Blue Forget-Me-Not Sometimes the importance of a flower is contained in its name, and forget-me-nots are one of them. The name comes from a German legend about a knife and his beloved, and possibly because of this, it became a symbol of love and remembrance, a promise that you will always keep a person in your thoughts. Hot Paper Chocolate Habanero has little in common with its sugary and sweet namesake, save for its gorgeous, deep-brown colour. Considered one of the hottest varieties in the habanero family (with up to 450,000 Scoville units), this chilli is definitely one for heat lovers.
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