It’s an amazing idea to turn your yard into an edible landscape by growing varieties of fruits, herbs, and vegetables. Being known as foodscaping, edible landscaping just not only beautifies your home but enables you to taste more nutritious and homegrown foods at the same time.
What is an edible landscape?
Famously known as foodscaping or front-yard farming, edible landscaping involves a process of growing food covering most of the lawn areas in a private or public property. It seems to be a complicated process but you can easily do this with minimal effort. It gives a pleasant sight to the visitors as a landscape filled with edible berry bushes, vegetables, ground covers or fruits are truly peace of mind.
Ornamental plants enhance the beauty of your yard but do not yield as benefits as vegetables and fruits. Moreover, vegetables and fruits need minimal care and can give you a taste of homegrown foods. For that reason, edible landscaping is achieved with vegetables, herbs, and fruits instead of ornamental plants. It keeps your yard green and growing while giving you a delicious taste.
Which plants can be used for an edible landscape?
Edible landscaping is appealing and captivating and it is a wonderful idea to have a snack at hand while wandering around in your yard. For those gardeners with limited space, it’s an ultimate solution as edible landscape foods look so attractive and yield a tasty harvest throughout the year.
Fruits for Edible Landscaping
Blueberries and Brambles
Blueberries and brambles are a great option for your yard to glorify it. Brambles refer to the Raspberries and Blackberries that are good for making hedges. If you have a space in your yard, consider growing edible berry bushes
Blueberries have tidy shrubs and pretty flowers and blossom delicious fruit in the summer. It comes in various foliage colors including gold and deep red. It makes a delighted year with twisted branches and makes you mouth-watered all day.
When it comes to brambles, these are easy to grow and bear a great amount of fruit in full sun. However, brambles can survive under a light shade yielding a significant amount of fruit. Raspberry is grown in various beautiful colors such as red, gold, purple and black, and makes your yard eye-catching for your guests.
Fruit Trees
Fruit trees especially flowering trees such as peach, pear, plum, cherry, or dwarf apple are the great options for the bewitching yard. Among various varieties of dwarf trees, choose those that will blossom nicely and give you mouth-watering fruits. Fruit trees can be grown along a wall or fence. Growing it against the side of your house can yield significant benefits.
Strawberries
Strawberries give a large flush of fruits in the spring and continue blossoming throughout the growing season. Filled with a lot of flavors, these are the delicious fruits that children love to pick. It’s amazing to take a bowl in the morning and make your breakfast delicious if the kids haven’t already eaten all the berries.
Herbs and Vegetables for Edible Landscaping
Herbs
Alongside fruits, herbs can be sneaked in for the border at the same time. Consider safe herbs for edible landscaping such as rosemary, lavender, thyme, sage, and oregano. These herbs give a charming smell and enhance scents in the garden. Herbs can help you to add structure to your yard or garden as rosemary and lavender can be used for borders and clipped hedges. Ground cover is necessary to make your yard look astonishing and being a low-growing herb, thyme can used for this purpose.
Garlic, Onions, and Chives
To keep wild animals away from your edible landscaping yard, these stinks plants are vital. If used alongside the walls of your yard, it can keep the critters away from other plants. Protect your vegetables by interplanting them with chives but bear in mind that chives tend to spread rapidly. Besides, garlic and onions need to be dug up which makes them a bit trickier to interplant. However, with minimal effort, you can easily use these plants along edges for the protection of delicious fruits and vegetables.
Salad Greens
Wild animals always go crazy for green plants. For that purpose, salad greens usually grow inside a container or raise beds to protect them against the critters. However, with necessary precautions, these can be incorporated in your yard for edible landscaping.
There are varieties of attractive greens such as “Swiss Chards” that have pleasing gold, red veins, and stalks. Kale is a great option in the fall when other green edibles are harvested. Greens make your edible landscaping graceful.
Vegetables
Varieties of vegetables can make your yard delightful both in taste and looks.
- Eggplants: It beautifies the yard by adding astonishing colors and texture. Eggplants are also used to keep away the critters when mixed with scented flowers. You can consider various varieties of eggplants such as Turkish Orange (Middle Eastern Variety). These long, thin varieties make a beautiful contrast with flowers in your yard.
- Peppers: With hot pepper, you can create beautiful colors that make your garden look appealing. Seeing a rainbow of colors gives you peace of mind. When peppers are young, pole beans can be used to protect them.
- Artichokes: Specially used for a backdrop for other plants grown in your yard, Artichokes give a charming sight alongside the borders.
Benefits of Edible Landscaping
Edible landscape yields a significant number of benefits to convince you to grow edible plants such as edible berry bushes in your home yard or garden.
Homegrown foods
It gives you a delicious taste of homegrown foods and reduces your dependence on foreign food sources.
Reduced food cost
Growing your food can be proved economical rather than purchasing it from a source with an unknown production system.
Convenient
Growing fruits, herbs, and vegetables right outside your door make it convenient for you. Besides, it encourages you to add healthy and fresh diet foods in your diet.
Improved taste
Homegrown fruits come in improved and nutritious taste and keep you healthy.
Minimal effort
Fruits, herbs and vegetables need minimal effort and can survive even with basic maintenance. It’s better to consider these plants for edible landscape as compared to so-called attractive ornamental plants.
Final Thoughts
Edible Landscaping enhances the beauty of your garden with edible berry bushes and entertains you with delicious foods throughout the year. With a variety of fruits, herbs, and vegetables, make sure to grow a combination of mixed fruits and keep the walls protected against the wild animals. It’s far easier than you think!
