What do people mean when they talk about edible landscaping?

Edible landscaping is a method of gardening that places food bearing plants into an ornamental setting. It was popular hundreds of years ago, but got pushed aside in favour of separating gardens into clearly defined areas devoted to either the growing of food or the growing of ornamentals with little overlap between the two. In recent years, however, edible landscaping has been making a comeback as more gardeners try to find ways of increasing the food growing capacity of their properties without turning their yards into miniature farms.

The concept is quite simple.

The peppers that you normally grow in nice, neat rows in the vegetable garden can instead be planted in blank spaces throughout your perennial borders where the ripening fruit will add an unexpected dimension. If you choose peppers with bright red, yellow or orange fruit, the visual impact will be that much greater.

Cherry or grape tomatoes often look nice in ornamental gardens, as do eggplants, purple cabbages, kales and frilly lettuces. You can replace your irises with multiplier onions, grow chard alongside your daisies or use carrots to edge your beds. Zucchini plants can add an exotic element to your ornamental gardens with their big, showy leaves as can rhubarb.

You can also replace your shade trees with apple, pear or walnut trees and your flowering shrubs with fruit bearing shrubs like blueberries, bush cherries, josta berries, currants, blue honeysuckles and gooseberries. You can even make hedges from cane fruit. You're only really limited by your imagination.

The maintenance needs of edible landscaping aren't all that much greater than regular landscaping except, of course, you'll have to harvest your food crops as they ripen. Since many vegetable crops are annuals (and those that aren't are grown as though they are), they require more water than the average perennial, so you will need to monitor your garden and adjust the watering if any of your vegetables start to pout.

Vegetables grown in ornamental settings tend to have a less severe pest problems since the individual plants are separated from one another by unrelated species, forcing insects to work harder to hunt down their next victim than they have to when the plants are conveniently located side-by-side.

To submit a question to Riverview master gardener Vanessa Farnsworth, please send her an e-mail at vanessa@gardenmuse.ca or visit her website at www.gardenmuse.ca.