Edible Landscaping: Beautiful and Practical
It’s possible to create beautiful landscapes that not only provide natural beauty, but can also provide food and other useful items. 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.
If you’re interested in edible landscaping, you’ll likely want to opt for perennials, since they will return year after year, saving you a lot of work each spring. After they’re planted, they’ll go on providing beauty and food for as long as you tend them.
Most of them just need regular water and feeding, and occasionally weeding and pruning, as well as insect control. There are plenty of perennial vegetable plants which are great choices. Usually the upper foliage will die off in winter but new growth will come from the roots 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. However, edible landscapes require scarcely more work than traditional ones. It’s actually pretty easy. Regular landscaping can be replaced with many varieties of edible plants. For example, plant fruit trees rather than non-fruit bearing varieties. Perennial herbs can serve as ground cover or small bushes. Decorative vegetables can be used in place of flowers or landscaping borders.
Try combining edible plants with ordinary flowers and ornamental plants for an attractive arrangement. Herbs in particular look wonderful planted among other, non-edible flowering plants. To achieve a different look, try combining different kinds of plants together.
Sage and oregano work very well as small shrubs, especially as edging for larger shrubs. Try planting curly parsley among your flowers. Leaf lettuce looks pretty as an accent. Leaf lettuce comes in different colors and shapes – combine them for a stunning look, edged with a border of grass.
Another good choice is planting edible flowers. These are plants are not only attractive, they’re tasty. For example, sugar snap peas have beautiful flowers in pink, purple and white, and after blooming they turn out tasty peas. Chives have remarkable purple globe-shaped blooms. Fava beans grow white and red flowers. Dill has attractive yellow flowers. Salvia and sage boast blue and purple flowers which are a welcome sight and nasturtiums are not only colorful but edible.
Perennial vegetables and herbs are great to plant in edible gardens, since they don’t call for much maintenance. Dandelions, chives, rhubarb, sweet potatoes, ginger, asparagus, sorrel and more are all wonderful to look at and to eat as well.
