Scarlet Runner Beans — Like Red Orchids Streaking Across My Summer Sky

Scarlet Runner Beans in Jacki Kellum’s Cottage Garden

For years, I have grown Scarlet Runner Beans in my cottage gardens. I’ve said many times before, but allow me to repeat myself: The earliest cottage gardeners were peasants who had very little land, and much of their cottage and/or kitchen gardens were grown vertically. I subscribe to that practice.

Because Scarlet Runner Beans are Both Vegetables and Flowers, They Are Perfect Plants to Be Grown in Cottage Gardens:

Like so very many other things I plant, I love the way that scarlet runner beans look in my garden. The fact that they also produce an edible vegetable–a type of green bean–is an added benefit.

Scrlet Runner Beans
Image Credit: Burpee

“HEIRLOOM. Pretty flowers and fantastic beans all in one.

Exemplary ornamental edible. Large, showy sprays of bright scarlet-orange flowers followed by oodles of 8″ slender pods with richly flavored beans. Young pods can be used as snap beans, use mature pods when fresh or dry them for winter. The more you pick the more these plants bear.” Burpee