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Enjoy Beauty and Fresh Food with an Edible Landscape

Lots of people are making the move to more natural landscapes. This includes gardens which showcase plants that are practical or which produce food. Quite a few vegetable plants are very striking, and many edible plants have decorative varieties. And with the prices of fresh fruits and vegetables increasing at a shocking pace, it might not be such a bad idea to produce your own.

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.

These plants require little in the way of care: watering, feeding, a bit of weeding, pruning and keeping insects under control will be sufficient. There are plenty of perennial vegetable plants which are great choices. Perennial vegetables will look as if they’ve died in the late fall, but in the springtime they’ll come back and undergo a new growth cycle.

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. It’s not that hard. You can utilize various kinds of edible plants to substitute for the features of more traditional landscaping. For instance, plant fruit trees rather than non-fruit bearing varieties. Many vegetables work well as ornamentals and can be used in place of flowers and other landscape accents.

Edible plants can also be mixed in with other vegetation to create a distinctive outdoor look. Many edible plants, particularly herbs, are good complements to a flower garden. 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. Curly parsley is striking in combination with a variety of other flowering plants. 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. You can enjoy both colorful beauty and tasty garnishes. 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). Fava beans produce red and white blossoms. The blossoms on the dill plant are a delightful shade of yellow. 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. Dandelions, chives, rhubarb, sweet potatoes, ginger, asparagus, sorrel and more are all wonderful to look at and to eat as well.