🌿 Edible plants that regrow every year, effortlessly

In a traditional vegetable garden, you sow, harvest, then start again the next year. However, some plants, once well established, come back by themselves, season after season. These are edible perennial plants. Essential in permaculture, they require little maintenance, promote biodiversity, and offer true autonomy to the gardener.

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1. What is an edible perennial plant?

Perennial plants are long-lasting plants, meaning they live for several years. They do not die after harvest like annuals: some go dormant in winter, others produce continuously or according to their own seasonal rhythm.

✅ They are sown once, then harvested for years, often with very little human intervention.

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2. Why integrate them into your vegetable garden?

🌱 Less work: no need to sow every year.
💧 Less watering: their deep roots draw water more efficiently.
🐞 More biodiversity: they provide shelter and food for beneficial insects.
🌿 A more stable vegetable garden: regular production over the long term.
🌍 A preserved living soil: less digging, more microbial life.

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3. Which edible perennial plants to sow at home?

Here is a complete selection of edible perennial plants that you can grow at home. All these varieties are available in our catalog of reproducible seeds.

🌿 Perennial herbs

• Chives

• Broadleaf chives

• Chinese chive

• Thyme

• Oregano

• Tarragon

• Mexican tarragon

• Lemon balm

• Pennyroyal mint

• Common hyssop

• Anise hyssop

• Lovage (perpetual celery)

• Marjoram

• Common sage

• Brilliant sage (St. John's fire)

• Scarlet red sage

• Burnet

• Common rue

• Bay laurel

• Chamomile matricaria

🥬 Leafy vegetables and perennial young shoots

• Sorrel

• Horned purslane (summer spinach)

• Wild chicory

• Wild chicory from Castelfranco

• Red leaf chicory

• Curly endive

• Garden cress

• Rocket

• Perennial spring lettuce (reappears yearly in some regions)

• Four seasons wonder lettuce (hardy, self-seeding)

• Cambrai green lamb's lettuce

• Large-seeded lamb's lettuce

• Curly chervil

• Common borage (edible leaves and flowers)

• Great mallow (edible leaves and flowers)

🍠 Perennial roots, tubers, and rhizomes

• Wild horseradish

• Rhubarb

• Giant salsify

• Dandelion

• Ishikura leek onion (perennial)

🌿 Medicinal and edible utility plants

• Indian ginseng (Withania somnifera)

• Stevia

• Tansy (aromatic, use with caution)

• Valerian

• Marshmallow

• Great burdock

• Black elderberry (flowers and berries)

• St. John's wort (medicinal plant)

• Wild nettle (young shoots)

• Alfalfa (leaves and sprouted seeds)

• Bird's-foot trefoil (forage and melliferous)

• Psyllium (seeds used for their mucilage)

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4. How to integrate them into the garden?

🌱 Create a dedicated perennial zone in your vegetable garden to limit soil work.
🌸 Mix perennials with useful flowers, like borage or scarlet sage.
🪴 Use boxes and pots for fast-spreading plants (mint, lovage).
🌳 Plant them on edges, under fruit trees, or in edible hedges.

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5. Can we harvest all year round?

Some plants like thyme, chives, or sorrel are available very early in spring, or even all year round depending on the region. Others, like rhubarb or lovage, start later but produce abundantly. These perennials create a permanent base to complement with annuals throughout the seasons.

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🌾 In summary

Edible perennial plants offer a stable, resilient, and self-sufficient base to cultivate with nature, without starting over every year. They allow you to produce more with less effort, while enriching the biodiversity of your garden.

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🌱 Want to garden more freely?

➡️ Discover all our edible perennial plant seeds and sow a vegetable garden that feeds you, year after year.