LEARN how to ‘Grow your own dinner party’ read the invitation to lunch at Sarah Raven’s beautiful garden at Perch Hill in East Sussex. As an enthusiastic, but objectively ungifted, vegetable grower, I jumped at the chance to see how much more I could squeeze out of my small London plot. Granted, I’ve had some success—courgettes, chard and rocket usually produce a reasonable harvest. Nonetheless, my annual crop of roughly seven tomatoes, two tiny carrots and a handful of blueberries barely makes a meal for me, let alone any guests. How lovely would it be to invite friends around for a garden supper of home-grown produce, each ingredient picked only moments before they arrive?
This is something Ms Raven believes is eminently achievable, no matter what size your garden, and she’s spent the past 30 years trialling the crops and varieties that will give the best results. For her, that means those that produce the most, as well as being easy to
