More Perennials, Less Hustle: Gardening Beyond the Supermarket | Sparking Joy

Next summer, I’m choosing a quieter, more generous way of gardening — more perennials, less hustle.

In this Sparking Joy episode of White Strawberries, I reflect on why perennial plants suit real life so much better than annual-heavy gardens, especially when you’re a parent, a busy human, or simply someone who wants joy without burnout.

We explore what makes a plant perennial, why supermarkets shape such a narrow food system, and how home gardeners have the freedom to grow softer, stranger, more seasonal, and more nutritious plants. From globe artichokes and asparagus to berries, figs, kawakawa, and heritage fruit, this episode celebrates the plants that keep giving — even when we step away.

I also share how I’m planning my own perennial spaces using soil clues, microclimates, wind, drainage, and community wisdom, plus a community-sourced list of favourite edible perennials that rarely appear in supermarkets — and why that’s exactly the point.

🌱 Gardening for wellness, curiosity, and joy — not perfection.

🌿 What You’ll Discover

• Why perennials thrive when life gets busy
• The hidden ways supermarkets shape what we eat
• Why flavour, diversity, and resilience matter more than shelf life
• How to plan perennial placement using soil, wind, shade, and drainage
• Why heirloom and heritage plants outperform supermarket varieties
• Favourite edible perennials shared by the community
• How perennials can support and protect annual garden beds

🔗 References & Resources Mentioned

Koanga Institute (Heirloom Seeds – NZ)

• Koanga Institute – Living Seed Bank
  
  

Previous White Strawberries Episodes that may be your next step:

• Perennial Vegetables for Harvesting Over Winter | Sparking Joy
   
• Mediterranean Guild Gardening: Figs, Grapes, Olives & Companions | Mastering the Garden
• Elderberries: Grow & Use Them Year-Round | Sparking Joy
  
  
• Growing Tropicals in a Cold Climate | With Steve Fawcett
  
  

🪴 Community-Favourite Edible Perennials List:

Apricot, banana passionfruit, blackberries, blackcurrants, blueberries, boysenberries, cape gooseberries, cherries, currants (red/white/black), elderberries, feijoas, figs (fruit + leaves), grapes (fruit + leaves), guava berries, huckleberries, josta berries, lemons and citrus varieties, loquats*, sorrel, mango, medlar, mulberries, paw paw (mountain & American), passionfruit (yellow, banana, vanilla), pepino, plumcot, peachcot, quince, raspberries, tamarillo, watercress, alpine strawberries (red & white), yacón, Jerusalem artichoke.

🎧 Connect with me.

Transcript

 It is the middle of summer here in Aotearoa, and that is also a time for Christmas. It's a time for New Year's. It's a time for like kids being off school. It's kind of like a time of the year that everyone fits. 10 months of their life into three months. And it's sort of an insane period of time, just how busy it is.

And I'm getting way better every year at pairing back what I do and making really good choices for Sam and not good choices for other people. Like I'm getting better at saying no basically as I'm getting older. 

The Joy and Work of Gardening

But one of the things I can't say no to at the moment is my garden, and I'm recording this now at nine 30 at night because I just have not been able to stay out of my garden.

So tempted to go in there because it brings me so much joy. But also there is so much mahi, there is so much work in the garden, and I'm just thinking as a parent, as a gardener, as someone that wants to release this podcast every week, which I have you guys, this is the 32nd episode, and I'm very proud of myself.

Let that be said, but I just feel like I have an answer. What I wanna do is have less annuals and more perennials, and I have been on this trajectory for some years now, but I'm going to be so good next year. I'm going to be so good. Watch this face. I'm gonna have less annuals and more perennials, and more so than that, I'm gonna have more perennials that you

have never heard of before or you've never seen in the supermarket at least. And so I'm excited to share this episode with you. I also must say that I've actually reached out to my communities and asked them like what are their favorite perennials or what their favorite edible plants are, which normally  📍 are perennials because they give us so much for so little work and they're often not found in the supermarket.

And I'm gonna share that with you as well. 

Hi, I'm Sam, and you have found your way to the White Strawberries podcast. Gardening for Wellness and Joy. So come along.



Perennials vs. Annuals: A Gardening Strategy

Firstly, let's talk about the deal with perennials. What makes a perennial perennial as opposed to an annual? So a perennial is a plant that is going to last for multiple years, and they're going to be able to be harvested for multiple years. So an apple tree grapevine, those are perennials. But typically when people are talking about perennials, they're not really talking about fruit trees, but we're talking about are things like.

Globe artichokes, which are more of a leafy shrub, and where you can harvest the flowers before they turn into purple Gores looking flowers. And you can eat those or greens like sorrow where you can continue to pick them year after year, or perennial kale, which we can pick the leaves off and eat them year after year.

So normally when we talk about perennials, that's what we're talking about at least. When I talk about perennials, that's what I'm talking about. 

Benefits of Perennials in Your Garden

Uh, and the benefits of perennials in a garden bed is that they need tending to a lot less. So for me, for example, my perennials can be in my food forest or in my orchard.

They don't have to be in my zone. One, I can often cardboard and then mulch around them. I can plant things like. Comfy around them and chop and drop. And I know that that plant that I like, the perennial plant that I'm gonna harvest from is still happy. Whereas I couldn't plant something like a tomato seedling or a cucumber seedling around.

Other plants like comfy, they'd totally take over and block out the light. I also wanna be careful with my mulching in my annual garden bed because if it's too carbons, those plants are gonna really struggle to find nitrogen because you're putting little baby and seedlings into the ground. So a perennial garden bed in my experience, needs more attention when you first plant them.

More or equal to annual garden bed, developing an annual garden bed, developing a perennial plot, but way less attention year after year. And for me, and remember, I'm an Altera, so in wintertime, uh, there's no snow on the ground and I actually can go out there. A lot of my perennials are suffering, but haven't died back completely, but like half died back and I can.

Go ahead and cardboard around them. I can mulch around them. I can cut back the dead leaves, or I can chop and drop them or whatever I need to do, and I don't look at them again until I'm actually harvesting from them, and then I don't weed around them until the following winter. So the work is not just in spring when I plant like it is with annuals, at least in where I live.

Perennials are awesome. In that year on year, they will give you more. Mass of produce typically. So my globe artichokes, for example, maybe I had 10 the first year, 20 the next year, and maybe I had about 40 this year. I actually did a post recently on it because I have tied a ribbon around my largest globe artichoke.

It's a purple globe artichoke, uh, because I really want some more artichokes. My daughter's really into them now, and I'm like, huh, I could totally fill the gap of spring, which we're literally eating some greens, but mostly we are eating. Globe artichokes and asparagus, and then whatever's left from the, the winter veggie.

But we are so over the winter veggies, by then, they're like the globe artichokes. And the asparagus are the two perennials we get really excited about in the spring. And 'cause my daughter likes them now I've decided to collect seed and plant more of them. So yes, I'll plant a seed and yes, I'll have a seedling similar to like I would in an annual, but I'm gonna probably put it in the ground over winter.

And, uh, that, because I said I don't get snow and I'm going to be able to mulch it in future years, once a year, and the amount that I'll be able to get from it, like in weight, it's gonna be a lot more. So that's why I want more perennials. 

Supermarket Produce vs. Homegrown Perennials

Why do I want perennials that aren't from the supermarket? Well, let's just talk a little bit about what makes produce really good for the supermarket.

Firstly, a supermarket wants to sell produce that has really great shelf life and looks good for long period of time. Supermarkets want to sell produce that looks exactly the same and is really consistent with consumer expectations. It's almost like buying a can of baked beans. If you buy a certain brand of baked beans, they're gonna be exactly the same with the same.

Like flavor profile and all of that sort of thing. Or like a chicken nugget, right? There are some kids that will only eat chicken nuggets, not my children. We don't eat chicken nuggets, but there's another example of like a really consistent. Product that you know, what it's gonna taste like as a consumer.

And so, you know, if you go get a pack of chicken nuggets or you go and get, , a Granny Smith apple from the supermarket, it's gonna taste like you expect it to. So that's what supermarkets are selling and that's what consumers. Think that they want from the supermarket, that's what sells well.

Supermarkets also tend to sell produce that has a really thick skin. So think again, apples, they often like will add a wax to the apple skin, or they'll be, , cultivated to have like a thicker skin that will protect them and means that they can be handled more. It means that they can be, put on a conveyor belt.

It means they can be bagged up without getting bruised. Also plants that the supermarket are selling tend to be ones that can be harvested all around the same time. Like you want to have economies of scale if you are selling to supermarkets, and that means you want your machines and your people to go through your orchards and pick those apples all in the same weeks or months.

You don't want. Produce spread over a long time because you just want to get like the mass and the volume, um, and you wanna have some economies of scale around it.

So it's about money. It's about making money, it's about making sure that they sell product that consumers want. Um, and it's also about having really big harvests.

So the cult of VAs that are being sold in supermarkets have a high yield volume. They have thicker skins. They're easily transportable. They have a high level of predictability. They have a really long shelf life. They can be picked like before their ripe, and then they can be left to ripen off the vine or off the plant somehow.

This is literally. The opposite of what you wanna have in your garden. In your garden. You want high flavor profiles. You want a resilient plant that's not gonna die on you without sprays and pesticides and things. You want seasonal abundance. So every season you wanna have an abundance of a variety of different.

Things to eat, right? You don't want 10 apple trees at the same cultivar of apple all becoming ripe over that month. No, you want one tree that holds it through over the entire season, and you can go out and you can pick it. You also as a gardener wanna have some curiosity. You wanna be trying different kinds of peas and different kinds of beans and a purple globe artichoke, like I said before, or sol like gardeners often have a really wide palette profile for different plants because we can find enjoyment in bitterness and in the sour and in the unique and unfortunately.

A lot of adults are still treating their bodies like children kind of you know, I mean, we all know someone that likes to eat just lettuce and that's their green and they think a salad is lettuce, and it's like, wow, that's really sad. Do you know like pineapple sage exists.

Um, and it's really exciting and I believe our ancestors would've had a diverse diet. So there's a huge opportunity gap here for home growers. We can grow things that are not in the supermarket because, hey. When they're cheap in the supermarket, they're abundant in the garden. So why not just get them organic from the supermarket if that's what we're into?

We don't need our plants to survive two weeks in cold storage because we wanna go outside and just harvest what we want for that day. We don't necessarily wanna bring it in, and fill up our fridge. we don't need all of our plants to taste the same, like we've got a wider palate and we don't need them to survive in cold storage.

We don't need it to be exactly the same as its neighbor. We don't need it to travel thousands of kilometers so we can grow softer, stranger, more. Aromatic more seasonal and frankly more joyful plants when we grow beyond the supermarket. So that's why today I am proposing to myself, and you are here with me, that what I need next year in 2026 is more perennials, ones that are not available at the supermarket, which is a pretty low hanging fruit, pun intended, and also less annuals.

Also, the cool thing about perennials is if I have a busy time, they still come back. If I am recording podcasts or , traveling or doing other things, my perennials are fine for some time without being looked at. They're often really good at developing deep tap roots that access nutrients, that annuals can't, and because they become more productive over time, you can.

Like, enjoy the fruits again, pun intended, of your labor over a longer period of time. They suit real life. So if you're a parent, a worker, a human with fluctuating energy, like half the population at least perennials, keep going when you don't. And importantly, perennials are often wear, the supermarket gives up 'cause they're too slow, they're too seasonal, they're too soft, they're too weird, but they're perfect for home gardeners.





All right, so maybe I have planted a seed again, pun intended. Oh, I'm doing so many puns this episode. I'm very clever. Maybe you wanna join me and having more perennials and less annuals, or at least more perennials.

Right. And. 

Planning Your Perennial Garden

If that is the case, here are the steps that I'll be taking to add to my perennial collection. My current perennial collection, and I think we all have some perennials, right? Even if it's some fruit trees or some other trees or neighbor's trees, those all are perennials and they are affecting our land.

The first thing we need to do, or I need to do is have a look at where I'm gonna have these perennials and have a look at how that space is currently used and what it's like. And I'm gonna take some notes. Guys. I love a garden journal, and I hope you all have. Some sort of booklet or journal. When I first moved onto this property, I spent a lot of time looking at where I was gonna put my zone one, and I'm gonna need to do a similar thing for my perennials when I add them and figure out where I'm gonna put them.

But I would like collect. The weeds that were growing in that space. And then I would do some research into what that weed was showing me. Was the land really damp? Was it low in something? Et cetera. So have a look at your land. If you have a pH tester, test the pH, you know that if it's a lower pH, you'll find that berries are happier there.

What is the soil like? Is it crumbly? Uh, what is it covered in currently? Is it kaku, uh, or another grass or other weeds? What happens if you dig a hole and use a hose to fill it up? Does the water drain away really quickly? Does it sit there for hours? In which case you've got poor drainage, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Some perennials will wanna be in poor drainage. How much shade does it get? Again, not a bad thing. Some berries love shade, like along the. Southern, so , the side of my shed that doesn't get a lot of sun. I am growing a thriving warchester berry bush at the moment, and also kawa kawa, which are both delicious.

My hydrangeas are happy there. So some things love shade. Is it open or sheltered? How much wind is the space gonna get? And what is the wind like? Is it just coming? In the summer, is it a strong winter wind?

Do a little bit of research. You may already know this. I have a fair idea myself of what my land is like, but I'm gonna have to be a little bit proactive around looking at where I want to add those perennial beds.



Have a think about. We wanna put your perennials and here's some kind of things to keep in mind. If you want the friendly reminder, some perennials need structure like run beans, which are a perennial bean, or. Passion fruit or grapes. I'm obsessed with every structure I own. Having something grow up it.

We can get a lot of wind here as I'm in a valley. So it's really important to me that structures firm and I can't even really grow annual beans on bamboo teepees because I just know that one day the wind's gonna come and it's gonna push it down.

I grow a lot of things up the northern side of my shed, but also the southern side of my shed. Consider microclimates, like where in your food forest or orchard, if you have one, or your property, your beer property, if you don't, do you have microclimates? Is there a space that is more sheltered but gets sun and is a bit warmer?

Are there places where the frost settles or where there's no frost? If you get snow, how long is it there for? And does it tend to settle in some places more than others? Look, there are good things about having frost settling somewhere. Like, for example, my peonies at the moment are in a place that I have now realized it's becoming quite subtropical.

I need to move my peonies and put them down with my dupes, where my almond with my almonds and my cherries, and things that need a cold. Like a cold winter, they need to go, I need to move them there. So consider your microclimates. You might also wanna consider growing perennials, edibles, or other ones that spark joys around the edges of your annual garden beds.

They're often really good at stopping weeds from entering into the annual garden patch. Along the top of the soil , things like buttercup or kaku grass. What I have is I have rosemary and other various edibles and non edibles in a hedge that are the first boundary for those weeds coming in through the sides.

But then I have comfrey, just inside that, and this means that it's very hard for weeds to get into my annual garden beds. Have you ever raised garden bed or box gardens? This might look different, but. You might have perennials along one sort of side of them. If, especially if you put a trellis up, you could have your run of beans there.

Be careful with your annual beds. If you're growing something like potato kumara, and you are digging them up, maybe consider the perennials. You used to also be plants that can be dug up once a year. So yak on or Jerusalem artichoke.

Do you want your perennial plants to die back, uh, every winter? Or is it better that they're deciduous because it's gonna let more sunlight into your winter veggie patch? Uh, many do. So for example, for my northern side of my zone one, I do have two apple trees.

I'm trying to think. I've got two apple trees and I have a med light, and I have a pear, which are all deciduous, letting light in over the winter.

However, where the wind hits, which there's like one kind of direction that it can hit from either end, I grow sugar cane and canna lilies, which are. Not deciduous and they can handle a lot of wind and I don't really care if a few of those branches break as long as the wind is not getting into my annual garden bed.

So those are examples of perennials that in the case of the sugar cane is edible, obviously, and is actually preventing wind from coming in. So see where you can put your perennials that are gonna support your annuals that are gonna thrive where they are and. Allow you to spend your summers, focusing on your annuals and focusing on Christmas, or focusing on other things that you wanna be doing, not just hustling in your annual garden bed. 📍 





The second thing we need to do is figure out what perennials are happy in our space, and there's two ways I like to do this.

The first way is I like to contact trusted, tried, and true seed saving. Organizations, and I've mentioned the Kanga Institute and I'll link them in my show notes, uh, in New Zealand. I know that they have saved seeds and they have a huge perennial catalog of heirloom seeds that are suited for might.

Area because they used to be a little bit further north than where I live, and now they're a little bit further south than where I live. And so the things that they sell are happy on my land. So that is one option. Another option, and you could use both options as well, is talking directly to your community.

And so for me, you know, this often is like doing lots of walks through. Gardens in real life and making sure I take a little hand spa in my gloves and a pair of secrets in the back or the bag or a bucket and being very open. Like, I'm just wondering, ooh, what is this? What is that? Take some photos, um, and then either maybe they might even give you some root cuttings or something like that.

So. Talking to your community, either in real life it might be a seed saving club that you have. It might be a group of women or group of men, or it might be like some of my groups is just me and all the oldies, and that's awesome too. There's so much wisdom in those spaces. So talking to people and also online communities like find your, if you are really excited for Banana, find bananas in.

Your city Facebook community group and ask them what sort of bananas would like to be in this really sunny, really windy and also very wet spot because I'm really interested in bananas. Um, and get some feedback when we are looking at different cultivars of different plants. And I have an apology in my previous episode I was saying cultivators lots, incorrect term.

Cultivar and Var actually looked it up. Is. Cultivated varieties. So it's taking the cultivator and the variety beginning of each word anyway, cultivars. So they're very specific to your region, which is why I highly recommend going heirloom, going heirloom heritage varieties because the people that, have lived on that land have also like evolved and co-evolved with those seeds or with those plants.

An LM is not just old. It's adapted. It carries genetics that expect variation. and you can even save your happiest plants. Like I mentioned with the globe artichoke, with the little ribbon I've put around mine.

Like that was my happiest plant and that was my biggest globe artichoke. And that's the one I'm gonna say seeds from. So you can do that with an heirloom variety. They have, like I said, co-evolved with humans over a long period of time and they tend to have really good yields because humans have still actually created these cultivars that they're something that, you know, our ancestors worked hard to create.

They're just not, insane mega machines like we get from the supermarket varieties. . But remember this means depth and flavor, and depth and flavor is depth and nutrients. So we wanna go heritage or heirloom varieties. Okay.

Without further ado,

Community Favorites: Unique Perennials

what did my community come back with? So when I asked my community what is your favorite edible. Plant that you cannot get from the supermarket.

90% of what was said was perennial. And I know why, because I was asking this question to a biased group of people that are biased towards perennials and efficient gardens. The first, little group that came through were interesting berries, so gooseberries, uh, ground berries. Which I think are a Cape Gooseberry.

I have lots of Cape Gooseberry, and I think when I did my research, that was the same as a ground berry currents, josta berries, which I've never had before. So that's gone on my list. mulberry and alpine strawberries. Ding, ding, ding. I like my alpine stories, obviously. And all of those plants are. Gonna give us berries, but are really different.

Like, I'm so excited for my mulberry . I've got a tree and I can't believe how happy she is. This is tiny little tree. She's only about 30 centimeters high, and she's already given me two berries. I wouldn't have let her have those berries. Had I known, that she had already gone into flour and had these berries, I wouldn't have let it.

She's too little, but they were amazing and I'd never had a mulberry before. The next group of. Plants that people mentioned were like subtropical plants or plants that you would see in subtropics, but also could be in a temperate environment. So things like paw paws, the mountain paw paws were consistently mentioned showing how much gardeners value fruit.

That's like either unavailable or expensive in supermarkets. Same with. Passion fruits, like people said, yellow passion fruits or banana passion fruits in New Zealand, the banana passion fruit is a weed, but I have definitely been known to pick all those passion fruit before I then pull the roots up.

The next group I noticed was, natives. So in New Zealand alter Kawa, Kawa was mentioned a few times and Kawa Kaa is a native, huh? Would it be called a berry? I don't think it's a berry. It's a fruit. They kind of look like little candles. I'd have to look at the definition of a berry, but the fruit are so good.

When we hiked the Queen Charlotte track at the top of the south island last year, there was a lot of. kawakawa berries and I became really quite obsessed with finding them as I was on the hike. Um, they went straight through my body just in case. Anyone's wondering what they do for your insides, any berries if you binge on them and are not gonna like, sit well with your stomach.

But they were so good and I just kept eating them. I didn't care. , But also like the. The leaves, you can make tea out of this really high health properties. So I thought that was really cool that people were aware of our native plants that we already have. For me, this wasn't on the list, but for me, also Karamu, which is our native Caprosma Robusta in New Zealand, I really like the berries on it.

That's so tiny. And they're more seed than they are berry. Uh, but I'll add them to kombucha



Or I'll put them in a fruit salad with some yogurt or something like that. Others on the list were Jerusalem artichokes, there are perennial sunflower and they are yummy and small doses in a roast with other veggies, but they're called farter chokes for a reason.

Globe artichokes came up and I've mentioned 'em enough, but they're one of my faves, when I went through traveling this year through Italy, their globe artichokes were in supermarkets, and they looked really different again. Then there were some softer.

Fruit trees mentioned. So things like Fi Joes and Figs and Fi Joes for a long time. Ino New Zealand, were not in supermarkets. They have just recently, in the last five years started coming to supermarkets. But for me, they don't taste as good. They're always like a little bit over ripe or they're a bit funny.

They come on plastic bags. I much prefer them straight off the tree. Um, figs. Completely abundant free tree to grow. It takes so easily from a cutting. There's a lot of different Fridays, they're so good off the tree, and again, getting them to the supermarket takes a lot of plastic and they're just, they're often override by the time I see them, and they're very rarely actually seen on the.

Across all comments, there was a clear pattern. People are choosing perennial plants that either produce abundant fruit or they're hard to source in stores or have unusual flavors showing how home gardens are providing something that the supermarkets simply can't. 





.



Comprehensive List of Edible Perennials

Before I sign off, I wanna give you a full list, and this is the list that I will put on my socials if you wanna check it out. And here is the list. These are the things that were the favorite edible perennials that people mentioned when I reached out. Apricot tobacco, banana passion fruit, blackberries.

Black currents. Black raspberries. I've never tried those, but I'm going to blueberries. I have a good mind to actually take one entire of my annual garden bed and put it into blueberries this season. Uh, I would like it to still have the chicken dome to be able to sit on top of it, so I'm gonna need to do a little bit of research around that, but I think that's what I'm gonna do.

Uh, just, just brainstorming out loud here. Uh, boys and Breeze, Cape Gooseberries. Chili and guava. Berries. Currents, black, red and white elder berries. Fi jars, figs. You can cook the leaves and you can eat off the fig tree. Same with grapes. Uh, like seeded table grapes. You can actually cook those leaves.

There's lots of veto in them. There's really fun recipes with grape and fig leaves as well. So check that out. Guava berries, huckleberries, josta, berries, lemonade, lemons. And I'm gonna add to this list. There are so many fun citrus fruits. Okay. Red grapefruit, uh, various types of fun. Little lime, the kefi lime where you eat the leaves, like there's a lot of really cool citrus that you cannot find in the supermarket.

Low quats, uh, in New Zealand, in Auckland, the city that I live low quats, actually weeds, so there are legal to sell and buy, but um. You may be able to find one somewhere if it's something that you want in your life. Be really careful if you've got the guava moth though, because they can harbor guava moth and low cots are not worth harboring guava moth 'cause guava moth will destroy almost all the rest of your, uh, fruit trees.

So do a little bit of research in that before you grow a low co. Just the fact that it is a weed and also, uh, harvest guava moth, uh, mango. So you're gonna need some, you're gonna need some subtropical tropical conditions from mango Medler. Mulberries Paw Paws, American Paw PPOs, passion fruits, so yellow, vanilla, banana.

Let's get creative. Let's find a passion fruit that really wants to live on our property. It does not have to be the standard passion fruit that costs $3 each. The supermarket papino. I have not tried Papino Plumcot Peach Cot. I have not tried either of those either Cherine. Quince, raspberries, tlo. So that's another fun.

Citrus watercress, alpine strawberries. So they come in red and obviously white. Hence this. The name of the strawberry White Strawberries, the name of the strawberry, the name of this podcast, and yak on. Sol came up a lot, which is a sort of a sour, bitter, evergreen, uh, perennial green. And people really love Sol. I mean, it was probably one of the plants that was mentioned the most. So I'm gonna play with Sol again. , And maybe you wanna look into it too. 📍 

There are some episodes that would be really nice next steps for you if some of this piqued your interest.

And I wanna give you a heads up that they exist. Was called perennial vegetables for harvesting over winter. Another one was all about the Mediterranean Guild, so that includes figs, grapes, olives, and companions of the Mediterranean Guild.

That might be interesting, especially if you think you've got a Mediterranean climate and you're not really sure where to start with your perennials. , Elderberries, I talked a lot about alder berries and their perennial.

I really rate, elderberries have great science behind them in how they actually impact your bodies, and it's in a really positive way. So this episode is called Elderberries Grow and use Them year round.

And then lastly, I wanted to mention that there is an episode where I did a interview with Steve Fawset from Tropo. It's called Growing Topicals in a Cold, cold Climate. And I've had some amazing feedback from listeners just around how. He makes growing sub topicals seem accessible and that it's okay to trial and error something.

So if sub topicals are really sparking joy to you and after listening to this episode, you're like, oh my gosh, imagine growing, some bananas around the corner or something. Um, I would check out growing Topicals in a cold climate.

 All right. That is  📍 all from me. Have I missed your favorite perennial off the list? Let me know. Also, if you want me to delve into something I briefly mentioned here some more, please do that. I love hearing from you. You can answer through your podcast app or on socials at White Strawberries podcast. I'm on Instagram and Facebook at the moment.

Mere Kirimete or Merry Christmas. In the sun, in the winter, wherever you are, may your gardens be full of yummy produce beyond the supermarket and your strawberries white.  ​