A comprehensive guide to selecting and growing flowers that can be used for cookery, both as garnishes and as ingredients. Over 90 color illustrations.
Anyone who picks up The Edible Flower Garden will be tempted to grow, harvest, and sample at least a few of the more than forty varieties of edible flowers. Among them, you'll find more familiar food plants--dill and mustard, for example--in addition to common flowers, such as tulips or roses. Author Rosalind Creasy's stunning photography and detailed plans for an edible flower garden make this a must-have book for any flower gardener or home chef.
Come along with Creasy on a tour with colorful pictures and careful diagrams and descriptions of her own flower gardens. Included is a tour of the edible flower gardens of Alice Waters famed Chez Panisse restaurant.
Creasy catalogues each variety of flower and how to grow it, plus gives a myriad of delectable ideas on how to use the flower from candied violets and roses to decorate appetizers and cakes, to nasturtiums for a colorful shrimp salad, to daylily buds, pink clover and wild mustard flowers that are tossed together in a spectacular stir-fry.
Favorite Recipes Include:
- Flower Butters
- Candied Flowers
- Tulip and Endive Appetizer
- Pineapple Sage Salsa
- Rose Petal Syrup
- Lavender Ice Cream
- And much more...
Rosalind Creasy, a resident of Los Altos, California, is a landscape designer and leading authority on appropriate gardening techniques as well as a widely published garden writer and popular lecturer. Creasy specializes in residential landscapes that include edible, native, and drought-tolerant plants. She is a winner of the Garden Writers of America's award for excellence, and her articles have appeared in Organic Gardening, Family Circle, Woman's Day, Country Living Gardener, and Horticulture magazines. In addition to Cooking from the Garden, Creasy is the author of Earthly Delights: Twelve Distinctive Theme Gardens, The Gardener's Handbook of Edible Plants and a book for young gardeners, Blue Potatoes, Orange Tomatoes. Her Complete Book of Edible Landscaping received a Garden Writers Association of America's award and has become a contemporary gardening class
"Rosalind Creasy's enthusiasm and knowledge of gardening and cooking never cease to amaze me. Anyone who reads these books will catch Rosalind's enthusiasm and be off running towards a new passion." -- A. Cort Sinnes, Editor-At-Large, Gardening How-To
"For me, Ros Creasy is the Mother Goddess of a new generation of American Kitchen Gardeners. She inspires us all by showing how the twin passions of gardening and cooking are connected in history and practice. Her extensive research, combined with a personal writing style that reveals her creative zest, make her book absolute essentials for all gardening cooks." -- Renee Shepherd, Owner of Renee's Garden, Gardening Expert and Seed Supplier
"Whether you are already a flower enthusiast or have never eaten a flower, this book will tempt you. You are drawn into the beautiful and tasty world of edible flowers. Everything you need to know is between the covers of this book--from good I.D. photos of each flower and growing information to general ways to prepare the flowers and what foods they are best in. Even after all of my years of eating flowers, Ros has opened my eyes to new uses for many of my favorite edible flowers." -- Cathy Wilkinson Barash, Author of Edible Flowers from Garden to Palate
"When it comes to selecting seed for your spring planting, The Edible Flower Garden is filled with great information about flower flavors and textures as well as advice on how to grow and prepare your blossoms. From easy-to-cultivate annuals to long-lived perennials and investment shrubs, The Edible Flower Garden will help you decide what to grow." -- The Gardener's Eden blog
"...there's essentially an encyclopedia of edible flowers--what they are, how to grow them, and then even uses for them...it's a really great resource if people are looking for a comprehensive list of edible flowers that are grown in North America." --Hilary Dahl, host of the Encyclopedia Botanica podcast
Periplus Editions
March 15, 1999
0.7" H x 10.9" L x 8.5" W
112 pages
Paperback