Bunyard's Exhibition

Bunyard's Exhibition is a tall (up to 150 centimeters high), heavy-cropping long-pod variety fava bean with up to eight pale-green beans in each pod, which have a good sweet flavour. The yields are excellent and the taste is always highly rated. The flowers are pure white with purple markings. Because the plants grow taller than most other varieties they may need staking in exposed areas.

Sow Bunyard's Exhibition seeds under cover in the last last week of February and plant them out in the last week of March. If you are sowing the seeds directly outside, the best time is the last week of March. 

Bunyard's Exhibition is an rather old variety fava bean, which appeared around the 1890s. However, there is still a great deal of mystery about its origins, but it may be an 'improved' version of an even older variety called Johnson's Wonderful, which itself dates back to the 1830s.

Bunyard's was one of the leading Victorian fruit nurseries, based at Allington, near Maidstone in Kent. Founded in 1796, it became famous especially for its apples, including such favourites as the Christmas Pearmain.

The end was sad. Edward Bunyard (1878–1939), who inherited the family firm in the late nineteenth century, became a noted gourmet, but his love of wine, fruit and roses – which he wrote enthusiastically about in a series of books – drew him away from business and increasingly into debt. On 19 October 1939, on the brink of bankruptcy he ended his own life in his rooms at the Royal Societies Club in London.

Bunyard's Exhibition seeds are widely available online.