Hard to think, in these days of high grocery bills, of growing vegetables just for looks. But some can easily double as both edible and ornamental.
The other day I was tasked to give a garden club talk on “designer vegetables” which I grow as both beautiful plants and fresh nutritious food. One of the members even did a fantastic floral design using almost nothing but vegetables and herbs.
In fact, my best winter flowers are edible: Different kales ranging from smooth or frilly green to deep purple or pale blue with cheery yellow spring flowers, burgundy mustard (also with yellow spring flowers), red and green lettuces with different shaped leaves, garlic and multiplying onions with long thin foliage, deep green spinach, ferny carrot tops, and Swiss chard with its dark green leaves striped with stems and veins of red, orange, and yellow.
And those are just the winter and spring veggies. Come late spring I set out small patio tomatoes, colorful peppers, climbing Malabar spinach, royal purple or pure white eggplant or turnips, and purple cauliflower. One of my favorite heat- and drought-hardy summer veggies is a shrubby type of okra with deep burgundy leaves and pods, which contrast dramatically with the pale-yellow hibiscus flowers; doubling their value in the late fall, I cut the stems with dried pods and use them in flower arrangements.
Not to mention the fantastic combinations I can make in just one big pot of culinary herbs featuring upright rosemary, cascading oregano and thyme, emerald-green parsley, and mints. I usually have at least four different basils including plain green, curly green, dark purple bordering on black, and African Blue basil which has green leaves offset by dark stems and veins and large spires of lavender-blue flowers constantly loaded with bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
There are so many others, but these are enough to get anyone started with a garden that is both bountiful and beautiful. The trick is in mixing them up in combinations, rather than in long skinny rows like farmers do for large-scale efficiency.
I grow in raised beds and every conceivable container, from discarded washpots to gaily-painted five-gallon buckets and galvanized steel stock tanks I get from farm supply stores cheaper than I can buy large pottery.
At the Agriculture Museum in Jackson I helped Master Gardeners refurbish some old raised beds we built back in the 1980s, which are still mostly sunk and raised six or eight inches so they drain in the rainy spells but have depth to get plants through dry weather. We lined the top edges with 1x4 boards to have a place to set plants or put a knee down, and painted them for a touch more garden color.
Then I showed them how to mix veggies in groups and drifts rather than straight lines, more like how folks plant flower beds, making the beds so much prettier and photo-worthy. In effect, they are designed to look attractive until they get harvested. Looks better, and if something dies or gets harvested nobody can tell. Then all we have to do is pull up the old plants, lightly rework just that area, and replant.
This is a big thing for small space gardening, having a small amount of work to do every now and then rather than a big area to till and plant. Called a potager or mixed garden, it’s easy to have veggies, culinary herbs and flowers.
Such a designer garden is almost too pretty to harvest, as I am reminded every time I go out to gather beautiful kale leaves for a soup.
Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.
