The ultimate strawberry for looks, yield, and flavour

Our guide to growing strawberries, full of top tips from the experts here at Thompson & Morgan
Image: Strawberry 'Just Add Cream' from Thompson & Morgan<

Looking for an ornamental strawberry that tastes delicious and yields a bumper crop? Until T&M’s expert horticulturalists started an intensive breeding program to create Strawberry ‘Just Add Cream’, such a strawberry was difficult to find. After eight years of hard work, this stunning variety offers gardeners everything in one plant. Here’s how and why we bred this very special strawberry.

What’s special about Strawberry 'Just Add Cream'?

The pretty pink flowers of Strawberry 'Just Add Cream' look lovely in patio container displays
Image: Strawberry 'Just Add Cream' from Thompson & Morgan<

Normally, pink-flowering ornamental strawberries look lovely but only produce small crops that aren’t known for their flavour. What we wanted to do was create a strawberry that would retain the lovely pink blooms worthy of ornamental display, but also crop heavily and generate strawberries that were just as sweet and delicious as the best of the traditional fruiting strawberries. 

Thompson & Morgan plant breeder Charles Valin says of his creation: “The results have been way beyond my expectations: the strong alpine strawberry aroma shocks your taste buds and takes you back to childhood memories of your very first taste of a strawberry. You can both smell and taste the perfume. The flavour is really very special.”

Achieving our goal took a long time but we got there in the end. In fact, we’re so sure you’ll love the flavour of this ornamental strawberry that if you try it, and you don’t agree that it’s the best-flavoured strawberry you’ve ever grown, we’ll give you your money back. It’s as simple as that. 

How we created an ornamental strawberry that tastes divine

Cropping from May until the first frosts, Strawberry 'Just Add Cream' has been bred for flavour
Image: Strawberry 'Just Add Cream' from Thompson & Morgan<

To create strawberry ‘Just Add Cream’, we began by focusing on flavour. We took existing pink-flowered varieties and crossed them with the most delicious traditional varieties from around the world. No matter how small a crop it produced, if a variety was renowned for its taste, we included it in our intensive breeding program. We kept going until, having produced an incredible 2000 plants each year, we achieved exactly the taste we were searching for.

Having achieved peak flavour, we then turned our attention to improving the yield. We re-crossed those plants with modern, ever-bearing varieties until we were able to retain the wonderful taste and achieve bumper harvests. When we say ‘intensive breeding program’, we aren’t joking. But the results speak for themselves - this strawberry is the real deal.

Why you should grow Strawberry ‘Just add Cream’

Strawberry 'Just Add Cream' grows beautifully in hanging baskets, pots or the ground
Image: Strawberry 'Just Add Cream' from Thompson & Morgan<

Strawberry ‘Just Add Cream’ is a compact plant that produces masses of mid-pink flowers and few runners in favour of more fruit. In fact, just one plant produces up to 1kg of succulent ripe strawberries. Early to fruit, it also keeps cropping until autumn.

Thanks to its totally unique flavour profile, Strawberry ‘Just Add Cream’ differs from every other strawberry on the market. It combines the sweetness and size of home-grown strawberries with that special taste of the wild woodland or alpine strawberry. The flavour is stronger and more stable over the season than varieties with a similar aroma note, like ‘Mara des Bois’ and ‘Charlotte’.

Set to take the gardening world by storm, this new and exclusive strawberry is perfect if you don’t want to compromise on looks, yet yearn for the traditional flavour of home-grown produce. The pretty pink flowers add a wonderfully decorative appeal to patio pots and hanging baskets, beds and borders, and go on to produce fabulously aromatic fruit.

Those who’ve trialled Strawberry ‘Just Add Cream’ for us are in awe of the aroma and flavour of this incredible new entrant to the world of strawberry growing. In fact, many say it’s the best strawberry they’ve ever tasted.Head over to our strawberry hub page for more inspiration. Or try our fruit hub page for advice on growing other delicious berries and exotic fruits.