Old Favourite Tomatoes

Built for Outdoors

Some tomatoes don’t need improving. They’ve been grown for decades because they work — in British gardens, in mixed summers, and in everyday cooking. The Old Favourites Collection brings together three such varieties, chosen for flavour, reliability and long-standing reputation rather than novelty.

This is a balanced mix of large, medium and small fruiting tomatoes, giving a steady spread of harvests through the season. All three will crop outdoors in a warm summer, but they perform best with a bit of shelter, where growth is steadier and flavour develops more fully.

Included in the collection are two plugs each of Purple Cherokee, Super Marmande and Gardener’s Delight.

• Purple Cherokee is a heritage-style beefsteak tomato grown for its depth of flavour rather than sheer yield. The fruits are large, dusky red to purple, with dark, richly coloured flesh. The flavour is complex and savoury, with a slightly smoky edge, making it particularly good sliced fresh or used in slow-cooked sauces. Cropping is moderate, but each fruit is substantial.

• Super Marmande is a classic French beefsteak that has been grown for generations. The medium to large fruits are slightly flattened and gently ribbed, with a traditional tomato flavour that’s full and aromatic rather than sweet. It’s a versatile kitchen tomato, well suited to slicing, roasting and cooking, and crops reliably over a long season under good conditions.

• Gardener’s Delight is one of the UK’s best-known cherry tomatoes and has earned its reputation through consistency. The plants produce long trusses of small, bright red fruit with a good balance of sweetness and acidity. It’s an early and heavy cropper, reliable both under glass and outdoors, and continues producing well into late summer.

Together, these three varieties offer a dependable, flavour-led collection that covers a wide range of uses, from fresh eating to cooking, without unnecessary complication.