Enjoy some innovative French cuisine based on edible flowers while discovering Northern France’s botanical gardens and picking up some gardening tips along the way.

While enjoying classic French cuisine is one of the great pleasures of holidays in Northern France, the region is also home to a new wave of innovative chefs working with local flowers and plants.

Nowhere is this more in evidence than at the Table du Jardinier at the Jardins de Valloires near the french coast. Here, exciting dishes using plants from the botanical gardens include a salad of ground ivy and Bayonne ham, pike perch with nasturtiums and crayfish pesto, and crême brûlée with sweet woodruff. Before or after lunch, wander the botanical gardens and glean some ideas for improving your own garden back home.

In Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, on the french coast, the stylish Table des Corderies in the chic hotel of the same name serves creative and traditional french food including foie gras with seaweed, scallops with foraged herbs, and a dessert of saffron mousse. The chef picks up himself its flowers in the Somme Bay or at the Herbarium. Stay the night and offer you a spa weekend breaks in its sea-view spa. Or in nearby Le Crotoy, head for Auberge de la Marine, where recipes featuring local plants – some foraged – include duck tenderloin braised with sea buckthorn, in a light sauce of carotte des sables (carrots grown in sand) with orange.