They're sowed any time in April or May onwards, so you have a plant which is ready in six or seven weeks time, and then useable for just two to three weeks, and then they're finished.

The way to get them available throughout the season is to sow them successively -every three weeks sow some more.

Basil is different in that it has a longer lifetime that can keep going right through the season.

Dill is associated very much with fish, used extensively in Scandinavian and Dutch cuisine with herrings and salmon.

The stalks can be used to infuse the stocks or when you're grilling the fish, and the feathery parts of the herb are chopped up and put in the sauce at the last minute. Again, they will discolour if you cook them too much. If you keep them nice and green and use them sparingly, it's a wonderful accompaniment to poached or grilled fish.

Coriander is probably the most widely used herb today. It's featured in Asian and European cuisine, and is commonplace in many English dishes.

You can make Asian pestos with it or it can be used in stir-fries, and sauces and South-American salsas, and it's got that lovely aromatic flavour when you cook with it and when you chop it.

Cardoon

Cardoon is a large blue plant which can be described as a thistle which looks as it's trying to emulate a triffid! It's an unusual plant, and there is a recipe for it in the repertoire. It's difficult to cook -you have to cook with a mixture of lemon juice and flour with water or stock, that stops the discolouration.

It does look extraordinary as you can see from the image above - a perennial plant, which is interesting if nothing else from an architectural point of view.

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