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.
The majority of people who build edible landscapes utilize perennial vegetables, since they return every spring with no need to replant. 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. If you plant the right vegetables, they can keep you supplied with delicious food for many years to come. Usually they will die in winter but revive in spring, experiencing a new growth cycle.
Perhaps you are a little leery of this idea – after all, doesn’t a vegetable garden require a lot of care? This is certainly the case for traditional vegetable gardens; however, edible landscapes require only a little bit more work than other landscape plants!
Regular landscaping can be replaced with many varieties of edible plants. For example, plant fruit trees rather than non-fruit bearing varieties. To replace ground covers and shrubs many perennial herbs are possibilities. Also, ornamental vegetables can be an option instead of flowers and 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. You can blend many varieties of plants together to create a distinctive and appealing landscape.
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.
Plants with edible flowers come in many varieties. A lot of these plants may have more than one edible part. They can be very attractive pieces of a garden while in bloom. Sugar snap peas produce white, pink and purple flowers, plus they make really good peas.
Fava beans grow white and red flowers. The purple globe-shaped flowers produced by chives make them stand out from other herbs. The blossoms on the dill plant are a delightful shade of yellow. 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.
Perennial vegetables and herbs are great to plant in edible gardens, since they dont call for much maintenance. Perennial broccoli, dandelions, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, sorrel, artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes, chives, fennel, garlic chives, ginger, and asparagus are excellent examples.
