Edible Landscaping Part One: You Can Have Your Landscaping and Eat It Too

About author / Victoria Wesseler

Healthy eating advocate; master gardener; local food expert. Even veggie haters love her recipes.

Ornamental landscaping helps define an outdoor space and enhance it for human use. When you think of a residential landscape you usually think of a green lawn, some trees, a couple of shrubs, and a border or two of flowers. When you think of a food producing garden, you usually think of a square or oblong plot of land with orderly rows of vegetables and herbs. Conventional wisdom would say that you have to keep the two separate. But I say forget conventional wisdom! What if you could have your landscape and eat it too?

Edible landscaping, the use of food-producing plants in a residential landscape, offers the home gardener the opportunity to incorporate edible plants into a conventional ornamental landscape. Edible landscapes combine fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, ground cover, vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers with the more conventional, non-edible ornamental plants. Edible landscaping differs from home vegetable and fruit gardening in that the plants are aesthetically added to the existing ornamental landscape rather than segregated into a separate area.

I began my fascination with edible landscaping when we were building our home five years ago. At the time I though it would be fun to create an herb garden around our back patio rather than use conventional flowers and shrubs. Since the patio was directly off of the kitchen, I imagined myself being able to take just a few short steps and harvest fresh herbs for my cooking. I soon realized that most of the herbs were simply not colorful enough or large enough for the job of creating an attractive border. While wandering through the gardening section of a local bookstore one afternoon, I discovered and was inspired by Rosalind Creasy’s books, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, The Edible Flower Garden, The Edible Rainbow Garden and The Edible Italian Garden. I was off and running!

Even if you have a small yard, you can incorporate some edible landscaping techniques into your property if you have the right growing conditions. Most edible plants will need at least 6 hours of full sunlight a day. And, depending on what plants you choose, you may have to pay a bit more attention to watering, fertilizing, and pest management.

If you want to experiment with edible landscaping, you can start with just a few edible plants to enhance your current plantings. Sow some spinach, parsley, cilantro, or basil seeds among your annual flowers, put a rhubarb plant or two in a perennial border, scatter leaf lettuce seeds in front of your taller perennial flowers, or add a few daylilies to your existing patio garden. A few plantings of tulip bulbs in the fall will provide you with early springtime edible petals.

One of my favorite vegetables for edible landscaping is Rainbow Swiss Chard. The stems of the chard are neon pink, school bus yellow, and vibrant orange. The tall, oval leaves will compliment nearly any flower bed. Once the chard leaves are ready to harvest (I like to do this when they are about 6-9 inches tall while the ribs and leaves are still very tender), just cut them at the soil line with your garden scissors. They will usually grow back to reward you with a few additional harvests. Chiffonade the leaves and use them instead of spinach in minestrone or white bean soup, coarsely chop them and toss them with hot tomato sauce to serve over ziti, or simply sauté the leaves in a bit of olive oil and butter for a yummy side dish.

It’s easy to create your own edible landscape plan and enjoy plantings that are both beautiful and delicious. So, get started now and soon you’ll be tiptoeing through the turnips!

Serves/Makes: 2

• 1 large bunch Swiss chard
• 2 teaspoons butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/3 cup golden raisins
• 2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts
• salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste