The dwarf bushy nasturtium: a tidy mound of 25 to 30cm that stays where you put it, rather than the trailing sorts that set off across a bed. Classic trumpet flowers in scarlet, orange and yellow held above rounded shield-shaped leaves.
Every part of it is edible and peppery, like a hot watercress. Leaves and flowers go into a salad, and the green seed pods pickle into something close to capers.
The one rule that matters: do not feed it. On rich manured ground you get a magnificent leafy plant and almost no flowers, which is the commonest nasturtium failure of all. Poor lean soil gives you flowers. In the kitchen garden it works as a trap crop as much as a companion; blackfly go for the nasturtiums in preference to the beans, which is useful, and does mean accepting that your nasturtiums will be covered in blackfly by July. That is the deal. It self-seeds reliably, the seeds are big enough for a child to handle, and it germinates in a week, which makes it about the best first plant there is.
