The Italians think it's a laxative and the Germans say it leeches your bones, but rhubarb is a true British wonder. Here's how to do it justice

Rhurarb is a very English taste. All its wonderful uses in tarts, pies, crumbles and, especially, rhubarb fool (a British invention) have developed in splendid isolation from mainline cooking in France or Italy. Mention our love of rhubarb to an Italian and you will be told that they use it only as a laxative. Germans will warn you that its high content of oxalic acid is bad for your bones because it depletes your calcium. Actually, this is true only of the leaves — there is relatively little acid in the stalks — but it explains why many of us were brought up to believe that the leaves were poisonous.

All the books and articles you read about rhubarb say that it comes from Russia (hundreds of years ago) or China (thousands of years ago) where it was valued for its medicinal uses. That may be true, but it didn’t take off as something to eat for pleasure until about 1800. Before then, the references to eating rhubarb are few. Hannah Glasse gives a recipe for rhubarb tarts in 1742: ‘Take stalks of English rhubarb, that grow in the gardens, peel and cut it the size of gooseberries; sweeten it, and make them as you do gooseberry tarts… These tarts may be thought very odd, but they are very fine ones and have a pretty flavour.’

The availability of cheap sugar was a crucial factor in developing the acceptability of rhubarb as a food, although Mistress Margaret Dods included a recipe for rhubarb soup in The Cook and Housewife’s Manual in 1826. ‘Put them to a couple of quarts of good veal or beef gravy,’ she advised. It is said, however, that the popularity of rhubarb began in 1817 after a gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London accidentally covered some rhubarb plants with soil in the middle of winter. When the stems eventually pushed through in spring, the sections below the surface were found to be sweeter and more tender than usual.

Blanching is an old technique among kitchen gardeners. It is used for asparagus, seakale, celery and (in France) for dandelions, to promote soft and tender growth early in the season. You put a big container upside down over the plants to exclude the light and the plants respond with pale, extenuated growth that is softer and usually more delicious. Handsome terracotta rhubarb forcers were used in Victorian times and modern copies sometimes turn up as ‘blanching pots’ in garden centres, but forcing is not the same thing as blanching. Blanching means blocking out the light; most gardeners find that putting an upturned dustbin over the plants is enough to draw out the soft, pink growth to advance their crop.

The pink colouring of forced rhubarb stems is another one of its attractions. However, colour alone is not a guide to quality; some cultivars are pinker than others, but, as with many fruits, we instinctively choose the redder forms. True forcing also requires heat, which can be achieved by bringing a pot of rhubarb into a glasshouse, covering it to exclude the light and allowing the heat of the late-winter sun to encourage earlier growth.

It was a small step from this discovery to the development, later in the 19th century, of a whole industry devoted to forcing rhubarb in heated, darkened sheds. The centre of this specialised form of cultivation was the ‘Rhubarb Triangle’ between Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford in West Yorkshire. It is said that, at its peak, 200 tons were carried to the London markets every day by the Rhubarb Express. The tradition continues, boosted by the EU’s grant in 2010 of PDO status (Protected Designation of Origin) to Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb. The long history of Yorkshire rhubarb is celebrated at the Wakefield Annual Rhubarb Festival in February. The defined production area now runs to about nine square miles between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell, a much smaller area than in the industry’s glory days, but it supports the work of about a dozen professional growers.

Much is written about the cultivars that Yorkshire’s rhubarb growers consider best. These tend to be chosen because they can be persuaded into early growth and produce stems that beguile the eye of shoppers — hence the beautiful pink bunches you see in markets from late December onwards. Some even harvest the stems by candlelight to ensure that no daylight interferes with the process. ‘Timperley Early’, ‘Champagne’ and ‘Reed’s Early Superb’ are among the most popular for forcing, but growers usually follow up with mid- or late-season varieties that respond well to forcing in spring and early summer.

Gardeners can learn from the professionals. It helps to remember that rhubarb is a herbaceous perennial that dies down in autumn. It stores its energy in a starchy underground tuber, known as its ‘crown’, which benefits from a couple of months of cold winter temperatures before starting into growth again. The crown is the base from which the plant’s leaves emerge in spring. Some of the starch is converted to sugar, a natural process that explains why the earliest stalks are the sweetest.

Growth is rather slow until warmer weather arrives, which is why we blanch it or force it. By the midsummer, unforced rhubarb is more likely to be tough, sour and stringy.

Most gardeners who grow rhubarb try their hand at forcing or blanching some of it early in the year. You can also do this in later months because the plant continues to produce leaves all through summer and their stems, if the light is blocked out, will grow long and soft. However, this does weaken the plant, so it is best to let the plants have a year off afterwards to recover their strength.

It is also best to let young plants establish during their first year without pulling any stems. They respond well to a nitrogen feed in late spring or summer — well-rotted manure is ideal — but in many gardens they survive on minimum attention.

The truth is that rhubarb is very easy to grow. Almost everyone has at least one clump in the garden — and usually they do not know its name. The leaves are large and handsome (slugs love them) and the flower, if you let it run to seed, is a stately white panicle growing up to 6ft. It would be a wonderful accent plant in a border if ever we stopped thinking of it as edible.

The flowers are self-fertile, but they hybridise readily. All the rhubarb we grow in our gardens was originally developed by selecting the best open-pollinated seedlings. There is, therefore, a wide choice available from nurserymen with little guidance as to what to choose and why. The great organic gardener Lawrence D. Hills recommended ‘Glaskin’s Perpetual’ because it had a low level of oxalic acid, which meant it could be pulled (rhubarb stalks should always be slightly twisted then pulled off, not cut) over a much longer period of the growing season.

There are two National Collections of rhubarb: the National Trust has 130 cultivars at Clumber in Nottinghamshire and the RHS grows 103 at its Bridgewater garden near Manchester, but the numbers are expanding with new introductions and the rediscovery of old ones. Much of the RHS’s produce is passed to the garden’s restaurant, but both collections also act as a resource for conservationists in search of local varieties. It is to be hoped that more cultivars will find their way into nurseries and garden centres. ‘Baker’s All Season’ is one variety recommended by Caroline Williamson, who heads up the Bridgewater team that maintains the collection. ‘It produces new stems even in autumn and winter’, she explains.

This feature originally appeared in the March 18, 2026 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.