Enjoy Beauty and Fresh Food with an Edible Landscape

It’s 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. 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.

Generally, just some water and fertilizer is all they require, plus some trimming, weeding, and pest control. If you plant the right vegetables, they can keep you supplied with delicious food for many years to come. Remember, perennials go dormant in the winter, so don’t be alarmed when your plants appear to die off 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. This is all easier than you may think. You can simply replace some elements used in traditional landscaping with edible plants. For instance, 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. Many edible plants, particularly herbs, are good complements to a flower garden. To achieve a different look, try combining different kinds of plants together.

Low shrubbery, such as sage and oregano, will add a practical beauty to your landscaping. Try planting curly parsley among your flowers. Leaf lettuce looks pretty as an accent. Edged with a border of grass, a plant bed filled with your choice of multi colored varieties of leaf lettuce is stunning.

Edible flowers are also a wonderful idea. 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 have remarkable purple globe-shaped blooms. Fava beans produce red and white blossoms. Dill has attractive yellow flowers. Savory nasturtium flowers come in a wide array of bright colors. The herb sage produces purple and blue flower blossoms. You can also find blue and purple blooms in salvia.

Requiring little maintenance, perennial herbs and vegetables are an ideal choice for any landscaping. Perennial broccoli, dandelions, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, sorrel, artichokes, chives, fennel, ginger, and asparagus are excellent examples.