Violet Mania: How to grow, cook and eat violets
Have you ever wondered how to grow, cook and eat violets? Working with these pretty purple flowers is a wonderful way to tune in to nature’s most frenetic season, spring!
Here are five reasons why you should immediately pull out your grass and grow violets instead:
- Once established, they spread naturally and never grow tall, so goodbye lawn mower. (Word of caution here: they really spread. So maybe also goodbye to your other plants.)
- They are drought resistant. Their little leaves stay green all summer long.
- They look beautiful. Each spring you are treated to a breathtaking burst of deep, velvety purple flowers when they blossom. Early hungry pollinators will thank you.
- They smell heavenly. Perfume expert Normand Cardella describes the fragrance as ‘powdery, a little sweet and decidedly sad. Musically, a violet note would be a minor chord.’ (Especially interesting for those of us who smell through sound, which I do not).
- They taste as good as they smell and are fun to cook and eat. This year my son and I candied the flowers and used them to decorate a bunny cake for Easter. I’ve also made a violet syrup, which was delicious on warm biscuits or mixed with club soda for a refreshing spring beverage.

Love at first sight
My love affair with violets started the year we moved from the city to the country. Like most affairs, it started out innocently enough.
Early one spring day, when March was on its way out like a lamb, I decided to walk to the village for this or that and to enjoy the warm sun as I went.
However, my innocent mission was unexpectedly curtailed when my eyes settled upon a sprawling lawn covered in a thick carpet of the richest purple flowers I’d ever seen. It was love at first sight.
Violet fever
As if enchanted, I cast off my cloak of good manners and decorum and trespassed upon my good neighbour’s lawn. As I tread on the delicate blossoms, they yielded without complaint and released an intoxicating sweet scent all around me.
I was hooked. I needed to know more about them, starting with their name. Were they pansies? Violets? Johnny-jump-ups? I whipped out my phone, dropped to my knees and snapped a picture for a quick plant ID with the help of the Seek app and learned my beloved’s name. Violets. Of course.
My very own dear Grandmother’s namesake and therefore a sure sign that we were meant to be together. Never mind that she never did like her name and always does go by Vi. (But these were merely details for doubters, which I am not.)
Caution to the wind
I marched up to the carpet-of-violet owner’s house and boldly rang the doorbell, determined not to leave without some small token of the objects of my affection. But I also knew I had to play it cool. In this blue-collar-red-neck-village, the only thing worse than a missionary is a hippie and this was decidedly a hippie flirtation. Luckily I don’t present strongly as a hippie at first blush, so the owner did open his door to me, albeit warily.
Wooing my beloved
“How can I help you?” the violet-keeper asked.
“Hi! My name’s Jessica and I’m sort of your neighbour. But a way down aways. Anyways. I was just passing by and I noticed the beautiful purple flowers on your lawn. And I was wondering if you’d mind if I picked a few? I think they’re violets and I’d like to grow, cook and eat some. I’ve been wanting to try making violet syrup for ages… I would just need a cup or so of the blossoms to try a batch. But only if it’s no trouble of course.”

“What? Those are violets?” asked the man. “I thought they were just weeds. You can take as many as you want but do it by Friday because then I’m going to spray ‘em with RoundUp.”
My mouth dropped open. What kind of a monster would spray glyphosate on these sweet little innocent harbingers of spring? My head was ready to explode but I stayed calm, swallowed my judgement and replied in the coolest demeanour I could muster.
“Oh? My. Well. Um. It sounds like you’re more of a grass guy, eh? I get that. You know though…I myself would prefer to have violets.
“Would you happen to be ok if I dug up a few of your violets if I made sure to replace any gaps with grass from my lawn?”
“Honey, you’ve got yourself a deal. You can take every last one of ‘em for all I care.”

Bleeding Love
Moments ago, I didn’t even know these flowers existed. Now, I was besotted.
The next week went by in a blur as the love affair blossomed.
At first it was just a basket full of petals to dry for tea and to infuse in a simple syrup that I could enjoy with biscuits or in soda water on a warm afternoon.
But that taste wasn’t enough.
Soon I was back with a spade and dug out clumps of the flowers and strategically planted them around our lawn so I could admire them from home. But those clumps only served to tantalise my tastebuds. What good are a plant or two for a woman who has knelt upon a carpeted lawn of these velvety purple blossoms?
I justified all kinds of reasons why we shouldn’t (couldn’t!) be apart. I needed more. Now.

Before I knew it, I was coming back multiple times a day armed with a shovel and hauling trunks full of the flowers home. My car was heady with the scent of them and I could think of nothing else.
I was distracted and irritable when keeping up with my everyday chores. I cancelled plans with friends. My husband called me out for daydreaming at dinner instead of engaging in conversation. I was utterly engrossed in my love affair and saw none of the red flags. Until it was too late.
Caught red handed
It all came to a head one day when Bart caught me pushing a wheelbarrow full of violets towards my spiral garden.
I was away with the fairies (Oberon and Titania to be precise), daydreaming about the place where the king of the fairies would play a trick on the fairy queen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream…wondering how I could acquire oxlips and woodbine. And also what exactly they were.
(It’s true what they say – sonnets, songs, poems – all seem to speak only for you when you’re in love).
“What’s going on with you?” my husband asked, interrupting my reverie. “When is this fetish going to stop?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feigning innocence.
But then, feeling threatened, I quickly shifted to a strong defense.

“This isn’t just for me. It’s for us. You’ve been complaining about the grass path in my spiral garden for years. You’re always going on about how I didn’t make it wide enough for the lawn mower…cursing me under your breath and giving me the stink eye every time you mow it. So now it will be violets. For you! For us!”
“Look at yourself, Jess. You’re obsessed. I think maybe enough’s enough now and it’s time to step away for a bit.”
Hurt and embarrassed, I switched to outright nastiness. Throwing his own transgressions in his face: “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that time you deliberately mowed over my watermelon vine. You can deny it all you want but I know you did it on purpose just to prove a point.”
“Right. Well, it’s going to take you all summer to transplant that grass path. All I’m saying is don’t forget about what’s here in front of you. Us.”
His gentle scolding brought me back to reality.
I looked around me and saw my filthy car. My broken fingernails. The clumps of dirt and petals in my unwashed hair. Suddenly conscious of the aches in my back and arms.
Emerging from the purple haze
And then I knew he was right. I needed to come up for air.
Perhaps next spring when the powdery, sad scent of violets is in the air, I will return to the violet-keeper’s house and ask to transplant some more. But for now, I’ll focus on the little part of the path in my spiral garden that is filled with a carpet of violets.
I have more than enough to candy some flowers to decorate a Bunny Cake with my son. So if by chance you, dear reader, would also like to bottle up a little spring, please try this simple and fun recipe (with a child if one is available and so inclined.)

How to cook and eat candied violets
Ingredients:
48 fresh violet flowers with stems
1 egg white, whisked to frothy for about 30 seconds
½ cup superfine sugar (or normal sugar blitzed to fine in a food processor)
Instructions:
- Working with one flower at a time, use a small paintbrush to paint a thin layer of the egg white onto the front and back of each violet petal.
- Hold the flower over the bowl of sugar and sprinkle sugar by the spoonful over the petals to coat the flower head completely in sugar.
- Place the flower onto a sheet of parchment paper to dry and pinch off the stem.
- Repeat steps 1-3 for each flower.
- Let the candied flowers air dry for at least 24 hours in a warm dry spot.
- Use the candied, dried violets to decorate a Bunny Cake or store them in an airtight container until you are ready to use them.

About the author
Jessica Johnson runs a small, traditional Bed and Breakfast from a vineyard in the Similkameen Valley of British Columbia, Canada.
Raised to be a strong, independent career woman but now a vigneron’s wife and stay-at-home mom on a fledgling homestead, she is clumsily yet happily establishing roots in her new landscape.
An expert at almost nothing but curious about nearly everything, Jessica writes about her adventures in rural B.C. where she raises her son and other wild creatures and is learning the old ways to preserve and grow food.