IF you’re sending off your seed orders this month, and fancy including something a little less familiar than potatoes and radishes, I’d suggest buying some liquorice seeds. It’s a surprisingly ornamental plant, and interesting to grow. The only thing is, you mustn’t be in too much of a hurry for your first crop.

Of course, readers in some parts of Yorkshire and Surrey may already have an old liquorice plant growing on their allotments, perhaps a souvenir of the days when Glycyrrhiza glabra was a commercial crop in Britain, and Pontefract cakes were made from home-grown rather than imported roots.

You’ll find the seeds offered in several catalogues, including Suttons (www.suttons.co.uk; tel 0844 326 2200), and there are also two-year-old plants on sale on the internet, which would give you a head start, but at a considerably higher price. If you know someone who’s already got a liquorice plant, you can propagate from it by taking root divisions in autumn or spring.

The seeds are sown from March to May. To make them germinate more quickly, soak them in water for 24 hours before pressing them singly into the surface of small pots of seed compost. 

Keep the pots under cover at low room temperature, such as on the windowsill of a cool bedroom. The seedlings can still take three or four weeks to appear. Move them on to slightly larger pots if they become too big, ready for planting out in early summer.

Although it won’t grow much in its first season, by the third or fourth year liquorice can reach a height of five or six feet, with a spread of three feet, so it needs spacing of at least a yard — a bit more, if possible, to make harvesting easier.

It’ll grow almost anywhere, provided it gets plenty of sunshine, but since its eventual roots are very deep, it’ll do best in a rich, open, moist soil. It’s a hardy herbaceous perennial, meaning its roots survive over winter while its top growth disappears in autumn, reappearing in spring. Liquorice will grow quite well in a container, but you’ll need a really big tub to do it justice.

In mid-summer a mature liquorice plant is a fine sight, perfect for an ornamental border, its upstanding foliage looking rather feathery from a distance. 

In late summer, it carries pretty, elongated, pea-like flowers. This is not a species that suffers much from pests or diseases; the one thing that will trouble it is strong wind, so give it a sheltered position if you can.

After four or five years of growth, liquorice is ready for its first harvest. In September, dig alongside the plant to expose the roots. Leave the thick, vertical taproot in place to continue growing. There will also be thinner, yellow-brown rhizomes growing horizontally. 

Those are what you slice off for use in numerous recipes or to chew, dried, as the “Spanish wood” that you may recall from childhood sweetshops.