What is an Edible Landscape?
More and more people are moving away from the idea of simple lawns and towards making their outdoor space into more natural landscapes including useful, even edible plants! A lot of edible plants happen to be quite aesthetically pleasing; some vegetables and herbs also have ornamental varieties. It’s great to have your own vegetables - fuel costs are driving up the price of all food products, and produce is no exception.
Edible landscapes are usually made with perennial vegetables, which come back yearly without the need for replanting. Once planted, they provide you with food and good looks for as long as you take care of them.
These plants require little in the way of care; just watering, feeding, a bit of weeding, pruning and keeping any insect pests under control will be sufficient. There are plenty of perennial vegetable plants which are great choices. Remember, perennials do die back in the winter, so don’t be alarmed when your plants appear to go away in the fall - they’ll come back in the spring!
You might think that you’re not up to the task of caring for a traditional vegetable garden, because they involve so much labor. Constant weeding, raking, hoeing, watering, fertilizing, and spraying are all associated with the conventional vegetable patch. But edible landscapes require little more exertion than caring for a flower garden!
Regular landscaping can be replaced with many varieties of edible plants. For example, plant fruit trees rather than non-fruit bearing varieties. To replace ground covers and shrubs many perennial herbs are possibilities. Also, ornamental vegetables can be an option instead of flowers and borders.
Beautiful mixes of edible and non-edible plants are also possible. Herbs are great edible plants to add to traditional flower garden beds. To achieve a different look, you can combine different kinds of plants together.
The use of curly parsley enhances a variety of plants. It looks beautiful when planted in combination with other edibles, like strawberries, or flowers such as pansies and lobelia. Low shrubbery, such as sage and oregano, will add a practical beauty to your landscaping. They compliment your landscape greatly when used as edging in front of larger bushes.
Leaf lettuce looks pretty as an accent. Plant a section of varying types and colors of lettuce, and then add a border of ornamental grass.
There are quite a few plants whose flowers are edible. Some of this vegetation also has other elements that can be eaten. When in bloom, these plants can be very arresting as a landscape component. For example, sugar snap peas have beautiful flowers in pink, purple and white, and after blooming they turn out tasty peas.
Chives are a joy to behold with their purple flowers (edible and great in salads as well). The red and white flowers of fava beans add interest to any garden. Dill’s yellow, pleasant smelling blossoms are an attractive and fragrant addition. Salvia and sage boast blue and purple flowers which are a welcome sight and nasturtium (did you know the flowers are edible?) flowers are colorful.
Perennial vegetables and herbs are great to plant in edible gardens, since they dont call for much maintenance. Perennial broccoli, dandelions, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, sorrel, artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes, chives, fennel, garlic chives, ginger, and asparagus are excellent examples.
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