Aesthetic Gardening for Edible Landscapes
It is possible to create beautiful landscapes that not only provide natural beauty, but can also provide food and other useful items. There are many edible plants and vegetables that are also very attractive. Since fruits and vegetables are getting more and more expensive, smart people have decided to grow them themselves.
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.
Generally, just some water and fertilizer is all they require, plus some trimming, weeding, and pest control. There is an abundance of vegetable types that will continue to feed you for years to come. Perennial vegetables will die in the late fall, but in the springtime they’ll come back and undergo a new growth cycle.
You might not want the responsibility of caring for a traditional garden. Normal gardens are a lot of hard work. A traditional garden will require constant activity – weeding, raking, hoeing, watering, fertilizing, and spraying. However, edible landscapes require scarcely more work than traditional ones.
You can utilize various kinds of edible plants to substitute for the features of more traditional landscaping. Try a fruit tree instead of a regular tree. Perennial herbs can serve as ground cover or small bushes. Decorative vegetables can be used in place of flowers or landscaping 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.
Planting beds of leaf lettuces can easily create accent areas. Edge with a border grass and then fill the plant bed with your choice of multi colored varieties of leaf lettuce.
Edible flowers are also a wonderful idea. There are plants which give in more ways than one. Snap peas, for instance. Besides producing peas, they also give you the gift of beautiful pink, white and purple flowers on attractive vines.
Fava beans produce red and white blossoms. Chives have remarkable purple globe-shaped blooms. Dill has attractive yellow flowers. Nasturtiums are another beautiful edible flower, and bloom in shades of orange, yellow and red. Sage and salvia both have purple and blue flowers.
Perennial vegetables and herbs are perfect for ornamental, edible landscapes, because they involve so little care and tending. Look for perennial broccoli, dandelions, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, sorrel, artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes, chives, fennel, garlic chives, ginger, and asparagus.
