Edible landscaping is the use of plants that produce food in place of more commonly used ornamental plants.More people these days have chosen to create natural landscapes including those that contain plants that are useful or can be consumed. Many of these vegetable plants are very attractive, and have ornamental varieties.
Most people who create edible landscapes use perennial vegetables, because they come back year after year, without the need to replant them each year. Once you have planted them, they will continue to provide you with beauty and food as long as you care for them.
Aside from the occasional weeding, pruning, or insect control, a little watering and feeding is all most of them need. There are plenty of varieties of vegetables that you can plant that will keep feeding you year after year.
These plants will usually die during the winter, but every spring they return and go through a growth cycle again. With the prices of fresh vegetables and fruits rising at an alarming rate, it is a very good idea to grow some of your own.
You might not want the responsibility of caring for a traditional garden. Traditional gardens require great efforts to maintain. You must constantly weed, rake, hoe, water, fertilize, and spray traditional gardens. But edible landscapes require little more effort than traditional landscapes!
You can use many different types of edible plants to replace various aspects of traditional landscaping. Standard trees can be replaced with fruit trees and many perennial herbs can be used to replace ground covers and shrubs. Ornamental vegetables can be used in place of flowers, borders, or other accents.
Edible plants can be mixed with other plants to form beautiful combinations. Some edible plants, especially herbs, make great additions to flower gardens. All kinds of plants can be mixed together for different looks.
Curly parsley looks beautiful with many different types of plants. You can plant it with pansies, lobelia, strawberries, dusty miller, or dianthus. Sage and oregano are very beautiful plants, and make great low shrubbery. They look fantastic as edging in front of larger bushes.
Leaf lettuces look lovely planted in beds as accent areas. You can plant a bed of different colors and varieties of leaf lettuce, and then edge it with a border grass. There are several types of plants that have edible flowers.
Many of these plants also have other edible parts. They can look very striking as part of a landscape while they are in bloom. Sugar snap peas have gorgeous white, pink, or purple flowers, and they produce delicious peas.
Fava beans produce white and red flowers. Chives have amazing purple globe-shaped flowers. Dill has lovely yellowish blossoms. Nasturtium blossoms are edible, and comes in red, yellow, and orange. Sage has blue and purple blossoms. And salvia also has blue and purple blooms.
Perennial herbs and vegetables are superb for planting in edible landscapes, because they require so little maintenance. You can try perennial broccoli, dandelions, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, sorrel, artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes, chives, fennel, garlic chives, ginger, and asparagus.
Author Resource:-
Paul Hata is active in various social and community programs aimed at providing equal access to education,health and jobs to all.Paul has over 10 years experience in managing a multi-million dollar advertising company.Paul can be reached at - EarlyPlanet.com
![[Valid RSS feed]](/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
