Sweet Cicely

Sweet Cicely growing through plastic mulch

My favourite herb is now showing serious signs of growth! It has been slowly sending up a couple of tentative shoots for weeks, which have been viciously attached by slugs, but it finally has a couple of leaves on it. The picture above shows the most advanced, but the other ones I have in the ground and/or pots also seem to be making a move.

I first bought a sweet cicely plant from the a market stall of the Herb Nursery, about 2 and a half years ago. I'd previously read about it in various gardening books, and I have to say that despite its relative lack of availability in garden centres it does live up to its good reputation. The leaves, young seeds and roots are all edible with a delicious sweet anise flavour. And when I say sweet, I mean sweet - the young seeds taste like crunchy Black Jacks, which were one of my favourite sweets as a child.

It's quite a pretty herb, pollinators love the flowers, and it will quite happily live in shady damp corners. In fact, when I tried growing it in full sun it looked seriously unhappy by summer, so it's definitely a plant for the shade. But doesn't everyone have some shade? And since most other herbs have 'full sun' on the label, having such a good one for those awkward places is really nice.

So why can't you buy it everywhere? The only possible issue I've seen is that it's supposedly difficult to get the seeds to germinate, as they need a period of cold. But I've not had any issues growing sweet cicely from seed as long as that need is met - in 2012 I stratified the seeds in the fridge, but last year I just planted them in autumn and left them in the garage all winter.