Mark Diacono: The plant that becomes a friend — and it's the perfect thing to put in your Pimm's
Borage is a plant that should be in every garden.
I'm not much of a winter kitchen gardener. I’ll clear up some untidy areas, rake fallen tree leaves onto beds to mulch and enrich and prune where pruning is needed, but I’m rarely looking for excuses to compact wet soil, acquire damp knees or feel the wind exploring any gaps in the completeness of my clothing. March to November is the time I am naturally drawn to the garden and that means there is rarely a day when I don’t have borage (Borago officinalis) for company; it is one of the few constants of my favoured months and its lifting presence stops just this side of jolly to ensure I never tire of it.
Having intentionally grown borage once, it seems to have moved in for good, popping up as and where it fancies, the earliest self-seeders announcing that spring really is upon us.
For those new to it, borage is easy to grow, germinating readily when sown direct from April until around midsummer. You can even sow earlier, mimicking Nature by scattering a handful of seed directly into the soil in autumn for early flowers in spring. Being native to the Mediterranean region, a sunny, well-drained spot is where borage is happiest, although in my experience it will grow just about anywhere with reasonable light levels that’s not waterlogged. Allow 20in or so between plants and expect it to reach 23in–30in tall. If you have an as-yet-unused corner or a medium pot (multi-purpose peat-free compost is best) at your disposal, borage is just about the perfect low-maintenance plant to bring a little life to it as you decide on your longer-term plans.
Borage grows to a medium-sized plant, with soft, fleshy leaves and flowers that are most commonly blue, although it is also available with white flowers (‘Alba’), and you might find ‘Bill Archer’ with its cream variegated leaves. The star-shaped flowers of each are a delight, having five petals arranged in pointed triangles. Whichever variety you go for will offer a precious destination for bees and other beneficial insects that starts early and carries on through spring, summer and much of autumn. Grow them for a while and you might find some distinctly purple/pink flowers appear among the self-seeders.
Borage is an excellent companion plant, with its ability to draw in pollinators making it especially good next to fruit such as tomatoes, which it also apparently serves to protect from tomato hornworm by confusing it with its scent.
As much as I love borage’s optimistic visual punctuation, I equally look forward to its flavour. The young leaves and flowers carry a gentle, cool, fresh cucumber flavour that is wonderful added to leafy salads and cocktails (in Pimm’s it's a must) or with fruit, especially strawberries. I particularly like the texture and flavour added when serving fish and seafood, too. In Italy, borage leaves are most often cooked and used to fill ravioli and other stuffed pastas.
Blue flowered borage, Borago officinalis in a hand-coloured copperplate engraving from a botanical illustration by James Sowerby from William Woodville and Sir William Jackson Hooker's "Medical Botany" 1832. The tireless Sowerby (1757-1822) drew over 2,500 plants for Smith's mammoth "English Botany" (1790-1814) and 440 mushrooms for "Coloured Figures of English Fungi " (1797) among many other works.
When the flowers are at their most abundant, I freeze them in ice cubes to add to cocktails and other drinks when the sun appears: to keep the flower in the centre of the cube, add a fresh flower to each compartment of the ice tray, half fill with water, freeze and then top up and freeze again. Don’t worry about picking too many flowers, as their productivity is hard to exhaust even if you love them as much as I do and the more you pick, the more the plant produces. If you are looking to maximise your harvest, it helps to remove any tired flowers to encourage more to follow.
Borage couldn’t be easier to live with. In a couple of decades of growing, I’ve found it entirely pest and disease free, resistant to all but a serious frost and it needs staking only when plants are at their tallest and planted in a particularly windy spot. As I’ve implied, borage is a friend who likes to stay once invited into your garden; you are likely to find it springing up randomly, bringing life and colour unexpectedly, lifting the early season in just the way I’m grateful for. Equally, any plants that appear where I’d rather they didn’t are easily pulled up and cast onto the compost heap.
Mark Diacono grows edibles, both usual and unusual, at Otter Farm in Devon. His book 'Abundance: eating and living with the seasons' (Quadrille, £30) is out now.
This feature originally appeared in the July 1, 2026 print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
