Honesty Mixed

Two plants for the price of one. In spring, branching stems at 75 to 90cm covered in violet-purple and white four-petalled flowers over heart-shaped leaves. Then, from late summer, the thing people actually grow it for: flat seed pods whose outer skins peel away to leave translucent silver discs that hold light like small moons.

Those silver pennies are among the best dried stems you can produce at home, and they cost nothing. Cut them when the pods have gone papery, rub the brown outer layers off between finger and thumb, and you have silver for a winter arrangement or a Christmas wreath.

It is a biennial, so leaves in year one and the performance in year two, and it self-seeds prolifically. Once it is in a garden it stays, turning up in shade and gravel and the backs of borders for years. That is usually welcome, and it is worth knowing before you sow it. It is also an orange tip butterfly food plant, so leave a few stems uncut. Being a brassica, it mildews after flowering and looks shabby while the pods ripen.