Derry Girls, AKA Londonderry Broad Bean

Derry Girls / Londonderry Broad bean  is an Irish heirloom variety with roots from county Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

It typically is 90-120 cm high with lots of long pods around 20cm. The beans are creamy white but shifts to mahogany brown as they dry. The plants are noted by some growers as rarely being troubled by blackly.

The decorative flowers are white with black streaks. Some growers also compliment the flowers for their pleasant sent.

We think the variety benefits from some support, e.g. growing it trough a horizontal net or using twine to support the block its grown in.

We first grew this bean to help keep an old Irish heirloom going. However, we found it to be an enjoyable bean to grow and eat, which is why we probably will continue to grow it every second year or so.

Further information
This variety came to us from Irish Seed Savers Association (ISSA). However, it came to them from the Heritage Seed Library (HSL) managed by Garden Organic in UK.

According to HSL this broad bean originally became a part of the personal seed collection of  Mr. Lawrence D. Hills some time around 1960 under the name Londonderry broad beans.

Mr. Lawrence D. Hills was a quite well known influential organic gardener in his time and he was very vocal about the importance of preserving old heritage vegetable verities. Hills personal seed collection was incorporated into what today is known as the HLS collection.

Unfortunately there is no written further information of the origins of the bean, but we can quite safely assume that it was given to Hills from someone in County Londonderry in Northern Ireland.

We don’t know what the original donor called the variety but we took to affectionately calling it “Derry Girls” after the fantastic TV show with the same name (NI’s answer to Father Ted).

If someone knows more about the history of the variety or how long it’s been in use, we would love to know about it.