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Plants that are pretty, but you can eat aswell!
se999
Posts: 2,409 Forumite
I’ve had gardens of all sizes, the last was very small, but I still wanted fresh herbs & veg etc. but I don’t want something to look like an allotment.
There was a programme on a few years ago called the Ornamental Kitchen Garden by Geoff Hamilton, the basic idea was to mix productive plants into a normal garden look.
So what I’ve used in the past are:
Rhubarb – it has really nice glossy leaves.
Espalier fruit trees – look nice against walls and fences.
Asparagus – has gorgeous ferny growths.
Rosemary – pretty flowers and just as nice as any hebe.
Chives- grassy looking stems and bright pompom flowers
Bay tree/bush – dark evergreen leaves keeps life in the garden all year.
Lettuce – grow in clumps not rows, pretty ones like frissee & lollo rosso look best.
Thyme – the silver and variegates ones are really pretty.
Purple sage – again a pretty plant.
Courgettes – big structural leaves again, bright yellow flowers. I normally grow 2/3 in a cluster.
Morello cherry on a dwarfing root stock – the flowers in the spring were better than the neighbours ornamental one!!
Things I’m aiming to grow at some point are: artichokes, chard (a brightly coloured stemmed variety), sunflowers and hopefully some you come up with
Also there are things we count as flowers but you can eat them like nasturtiums, but don’t know a lot about these
Anyway, any other suggestions for pretty edible ideas?
There was a programme on a few years ago called the Ornamental Kitchen Garden by Geoff Hamilton, the basic idea was to mix productive plants into a normal garden look.
So what I’ve used in the past are:
Rhubarb – it has really nice glossy leaves.
Espalier fruit trees – look nice against walls and fences.
Asparagus – has gorgeous ferny growths.
Rosemary – pretty flowers and just as nice as any hebe.
Chives- grassy looking stems and bright pompom flowers
Bay tree/bush – dark evergreen leaves keeps life in the garden all year.
Lettuce – grow in clumps not rows, pretty ones like frissee & lollo rosso look best.
Thyme – the silver and variegates ones are really pretty.
Purple sage – again a pretty plant.
Courgettes – big structural leaves again, bright yellow flowers. I normally grow 2/3 in a cluster.
Morello cherry on a dwarfing root stock – the flowers in the spring were better than the neighbours ornamental one!!
Things I’m aiming to grow at some point are: artichokes, chard (a brightly coloured stemmed variety), sunflowers and hopefully some you come up with
Also there are things we count as flowers but you can eat them like nasturtiums, but don’t know a lot about these
Anyway, any other suggestions for pretty edible ideas?
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Comments
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Climbing french beans trained around arches (or bamboo wigwams) can be pretty if you select your variety by the flower colour, with the bonus of giving beans!
Chamomile gives lovely whispy greenery with a wonderful smell when you brush past (I planted mine beside my garden steps, which I walk past in and out of the house), then from late spring, the little daisy-like flowers that can be harvested regularly to ensure more grow, and that you always have flowers for tea!
Alpine strawberries. I grew some from seed, and they provide excellent ground cover, with copious amounts of strawberries through the summer. The berries are small, beautifully red, and poke out the tops of the foliage ground cover, the leaves of which are quite pretty, too
And beetroot gives pretty leaves, too, which are edible in salads when young, and cooked when older.
Nice thread!0 -
A book that might help is Food for Free. Collins do a small edition of it and while there's mention of lots of wild edible plants there are others such as comfrey and poppies etc along with tips on cooking many of them.
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Sigh. Yes courgettes have pretty flowers but has anyone got any ideas on how to dsiguise the grow bags? I have two 'lovely' grow bags on the patio.£16,500 in debt.
New debt free date: 2015 (was 2046!!).
Thanks MSE for helping me budget and therefore increase payments from £30 per month to £1500 -
You don't need to keep the compost in the grow bags.
We've always used grow bags as a cheap way of getting compost. So pick up some cheap containers you like and empty the compost into them. Cheap ones normally available at places like Poundstretcher, also sales likely to be on at DIY & garden centres now.
When you open them if you slice open the end, the bags make useful bags for dealling with heavy DIY or garden rubbish, like brick bits etc..
Hope this solves the unsightly grow bag problem.
Edit - Yes I know I should have had a compost bin to make my own, but this dates back to less 'green' days
Edit - Just remembered you could at one point buy 'troughs' to put them in, to make them look prettier.0 -
se999 wrote:Also there are things we count as flowers but you can eat them like nasturtiums, but don’t know a lot about these
I grew nasturtiums in my garden once. Nice and colourful but they spread like wildfire and completely took over the flower bed. Reminded me of 'Day of the Triffids'.
If you decide to grow them I would suggest planting them in a pot so they cant spread too far.0 -
I'm growing a chilli plant in a pot on the patio, it looks really pretty, lots of little white flowers and long green chillis. I think all the pepper plant varieties look nice.
I grew some oriental salad leaves once that looked good (mizuna, chinese cabbage, pak choi etc), I just put them in the borders amongst my flowers. Havn't been very organised this year with sowing seeds though! I think they came in a packet that contained a few varieties of each of the oriental salad/veg plants.
Fennel is a lovely plant, grows quite tall and is very "wispy" looking. The bronze fennel variety looks good.
I once grew some a cherry tomato plant that was a hanging variety so I put it in a hanging basket with the flowers, I thought it looked great!0
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