Planning an Edible Garden

Early spring is the time to plan a garden that can be enjoyed in more than just a visual sense. Edible gardening is a way to use space practically and sustainably, creating an attractive and tasty garden. Rather than relegating all edible plants to a vegetable patch, out of sight, out of mind, integrate them into the fabric of the garden as a whole.

Reasons to Plant an Edible Flower Garden

Many of the plants that we are accustomed to finding in our shopping baskets are often unfamiliar as garden plants. We are used to seeing the end product, the roots, shoots, beans or stems that we eat. The rest of the plant might be beautiful, have attractive flowers, scent and foliage but we would be none the wiser. Growing your own vegetables is a way to ensure that they are fresh and wholesome and a way of getting exercise too. Add the benefit of colour, texture and variety in the garden and there is no reason not to use ornamental vegetable varieties to enhance the garden.

Growing Vegetables for an Edible Garden Border

Swiss Chard

This is probably the easiest to grow and most attractive plant available. It comes in many varieties, the most ornamental is a variety aptly known as ‘Bright Lights’. Deep, glossy green leaves on white, yellow, red or orange stems that grow to around 50cms in height, they are easy to grow from seed, can be sown in-situ and can be eaten in many ways. Spinach-like outer leaves can be picked and steamed, while the stems are delicious steamed with a hollandaise or baked au gratin. It rarely gets eaten though because no one has the heart to pick it because it looks so stunning, particularly if you plant orange and red flowering nasturtiums with it.

Lettuce

Through the summer, lettuce varieties can be eaten and enjoyed. Lollo rossa, with its deep purple foliage can be sown then planted in the border where you can choose to eat it or pick the leaves selectively for salads etc.; other varieties such as ‘Salad Bowl’ or ‘Stealth’ have attractive foliage. Pick at them leaf-by-leaf for salads or sow slightly more than you can eat and add some young plants into the border. Leave them to grow and they will bolt, creating pyramidal plants with interesting foliage and flowers.

Edible Flowers

No – nothing to do with Ermintrude on the Magic Roundabout – just a way to brighten up the garden and the salad bowl. Many commonly grown garden plants have edible flowers. Nasturtiums, violets and day lilies have pretty and tasty flowers (if you can bring yourself to pick and eat a day lily flower, that is…). Pick day lily flowers when they are still in bud. Marigolds, rocket and dandelions also have edible flowers, as do roses. A word of caution – don’t encourage children to pick and eat flowers as some may be poisonous. Also, avoid the base of most edible flowers as it usually has a bitter taste.

Herbs

Fennel makes a very attractive border plant and is available in bronze. The leaves have a faint, aniseed flavour. Other useful plants include thyme, marjoram and rosemary. Lovage is also an attractive plant and can be added to salad dressings.

Edible and Attractive Climbing Plants

Have you ever noticed how pretty the flowers of peas and beans are? Some varieties of runner beans have scarlet flowers and lush, fast growing foliage. There are varieties good to grow as annual climbers with the added bonus of a crop of beans at the end of the season. Plant them at the base of an obelisk or up a trellis just as you would a clematis or convolvulus.

Squashes also make a brilliant display trained up a pergola such as at Chatsworth in Derbyshire. Pendulous gourds in a range of colours and shapes are available depending on the variety. Some are sold as purely ornamental varieties but others such as spaghetti and patty pan are equally good roasted or baked in a pie. The flowers may also be picked and eaten.

Don’t forget about fruit trees…

History of Edible Gardens

Most gardens began life as edible gardens, growing vegetables, fruit and herbs for culinary or medicinal uses. The monastic gardens of places like Reichenau and St. Gall had impressive, functional gardens. Gradually, as civilisation developed, ornamental pleasure gardens became a symbol of wealth and status and the common or garden ‘garden’ was relegated to an area out of sight, where the peasants could toil to bring food to the table. However, during the Renaissance, the French developed extensive ornamental vegetable gardens known as ‘potager’ – literally a ‘soup garden’. The garden at Villandry has an amazing example. Through the 18th century, vegetable and flower gardening was not in vogue and it wasn’t until hybridisation and new technology revolutionised gardening that growing vegetables and fruit became popular and visible again. The Victorian kitchen garden developed into a place where art met craft, but was still functional rather than ornamental.

Latterly, designers have established vegetable gardens that are equally attractive to the rest of the garden, but still separate. Currently the modern garden design trend is towards integrating the edible with the ornamental, to save space and be more sustainable. Many people want to grow their own vegetables, but may not want a separate vegetable patch.

Where to See Edible Gardens

Gresgarth in Lancashire has a beautiful, ornamental and functional vegetable garden. Hampton Court in Herefordshire has a stunning ornamental vegetable garden with many examples of attractive vegetable varieties. It is still largely a separate area within the garden as whole. Chatsworth also has a vegetable garden that has some inspirational ornamental features. Few places as yet integrate their vegetable into the main garden.

Be a trend setter, go and buy some seeds and plan your functional, sustainable and tasty garden ready for the summer.