Scenes From Gardens Past: Nasturtiums 2005

I love nasturtiums. They're easy to grow from those giant seeds. They make lush mounds of beautiful lilypad foliage, even in a fair bit of shade. They grow in a laughably small amount of dirt. (I once saw one leafing out merrily in the dirt washed against an uneven sidewalk edge.) And of course, sometimes they have flowers. But for me, it's all about the foliage, like those leaves in the photo above.

You can also eat them. A quick search turned up nasturtium risotto, and capers, and pizza and pesto and soup. Yum.

Photo: Mine.