Jenny’s recommendations

There are only a few varieties of runner bean.

Whatever variety you choose, your time spent preparing the garden, sowing seed, and looking after the young plants will be well spent, paying off in delicious, bumper crops of fresh beans. Scarlet Runner Best known of the runners, striking scarlet-red flowers, which in their native habitat attract hummingbirds. Ornamental in your garden, even if you don't eat beans. Stringless Scarlet Runner Worth the effort finding this variety, as it has less of a tendency to form tough ‘strings' on the beans. Purple King I love the purple stems, violet-purple flowers, and flat, dark-purple beans. Vigorous, will continue to produce late in the season, tolerating colder weather and even resisting a light frost. Unfortunately, the beautiful purple colour fades on cooking. Neekar Golden Runner This produces less beans, and needs more warmth than Scarlet Runner, but the flavour and novelty is worth it.

If you get confused reading about types of beans, you're in good company. They can grouped by: growth habit (dwarf versus climbing) pod shape (round, flat etc) whether they are preferred by the English or the French

the stage at which they are eaten (dry or fresh)

Just to add a little more confusion, many beans belong to more than one category.

From the gardener's viewpoint, the most useful category is whether they are dwarf or climbing, in which case they need a trellis.

Both dwarf and climbers are warm-season vegetables, requiring frost-free conditions for germination and growth. In temperate areas, the growing season is 5-6 months. Where we live, in inland Canterbury, it's more like 3-4 months.