Foodscaping — a delicious garden trend
What comes to mind when you think of a vegetable garden? Do you see straight rows of vegetables, or maybe raised beds?
Many home gardeners still turn part of their backyard into a miniature farm, growing all sorts of vegetables and fruit for their tables. There’s nothing wrong with that, but not everyone wants or is able to dedicate a large portion of their backyard to food production. For most of my gardening life I considered a proper garden to be filled with flowers and a few fragrant herbs — vegetables were never included.
Gradually, I began to appreciate the convenience, variety and delicious flavours of home-grown produce, and started to look for ways to include vegetables in the garden.
Enter the idea of foodscaping — integrating edible plants into your landscape — for a look that is both beautiful and practical. Basically you introduce vegetables with handsome foliage, such as red and chartreuse leaf lettuce, rainbow Swiss chard, purple kale and feathery dill into your garden plan, along with your favourite flowering annuals, perennials and shrubs.
The ‘aha’ moment came during a Garden Writer’s meeting at the Toronto Botanical Garden several years ago when Paul Zammit produced a luscious spring planter using frilly leaf lettuce (instead of coral bells) and flowers. Pretty enough for the front entrance and you could pick a few lettuce leaves on your way in from work. It made me think, how much lettuce do we really need for a sandwich or salad — a handful of leaves is often enough.
I’ve since read that we should be planting a ‘pinch’ of lettuce seed every few days, a little here, and a little over there, to keep a constant supply of lettuce maturing at a pace we can use. This year my spring containers included oak-leaf lettuce, it worked well with spring bulbs and pansies, and enjoyed the same cool, moist growing conditions. The leaf lettuce thrived in the containers, it was harvested last weekend for a delicious salad for our Father’s Day barbecue.
Recently, I introduced you to my tomato garden, all grown in containers positioned around the yard to take advantage of the available sunshine and reflected heat from a south-facing brick wall and patio, but I’ve also found ways to include other edibles in the borders — it looks as if I’ve unknowingly joined the foodscaping movement.
I’ve been including herbs in the garden for many years, most have interesting foliage, they are self-sufficient and drought tolerant. Spicy globe basil grows in a tidy, globe shape resembling a clipped topiary, it looks great as an edging plant. Use purple ruffles basil to introduce dark foliage in a container or bed design; lemon scented basil has a delicate looking cut leaf, and a delicious fragrance. African blue basil has dark green, fuzzy leaves that are purple on the back side, dark purple stems and spikes of purple-pink flowers. It works in a container, but really shines in a sunny border where it grows to a small shrub size by the end of the season.
Butterflies and bees love basil, and it seems to work as a deterrent for bunnies. I often interplant Genovese basil among annuals to keep the bunnies at bay — sometimes, it works.
Lemon scented herbs are irresistible, but did you know they can be workhorses in the garden? Lemon balm grows like a weed in my garden, self seeding and spreading by runners, drought tolerant and hard to eliminate. I was at my wits end trying to eliminate the lemon balm when I discovered a patch of the stuff growing at Larkwhistle Garden, near Tobermory. Patrick Lima told me that it is a good plant, you just have to know how to manage it. It made me reconsider my struggle with lemon balm, and instead of fighting it, I now put its hardiness to work.
A few years ago I took the line trimmer to a patch of unruly lemon balm and cut it to ground, within a few weeks it was back, well behaved and offering a drought and shade tolerant ground cover for the back of the border — the secret is to cut it back before it has a chance to bloom. In my Niagara garden, that means two or three severe cuts in a season, but that’s it for maintenance. I’ve allowed a fringe of lemon balm to surround a patch of Joe Pye Weed, its upright form helps to support the delicate young stems until they are established.
Further along the border, lemon balm has self-seeded among obedience plant and echinacea in front of a clump of steely blue panicum — they look great together. When the lemon balm is ready to flower, I just cut it back, by then the echinacea and obedient plant are mature enough to fill the open spaces.
The inner bed of the circle garden includes a mix of edibles and ornamentals: sages, tarragon, red and green leaf lettuce, curly parsley, garlic chives, and spicy globe basil. I’ve introduced a mix of garlic, onion and carnations this year — they all share glaucous, narrow foliage and work surprisingly well to give the garden a little vertical interest. People look at the onion flowers and wonder what they are. They are just regular cooking onions from kitchen, planted in the spring like a bulb and allowed to flower — and they bloom for ages without any help from me. All forms of allium are said to deter pests.
Here are a few other unconventional combinations that I love: Feathery dill with miscanthus and asters; tuberous dahlias, onions with an edging of mesclun mix lettuce in the side bed; lemon verbena (the best herb for lemon tea) and blue hosta; and Sicilian eggplant in a sunny border with sedum and miscanthus grasses.
My advice is to be inclusive—plant what you love, don’t feel confined by proper gardens that keep vegetables and ornamentals segregated—join the foodscaping movement.
Theresa Forte is a local garden writer, photographer and speaker. You can reach her by calling 905-351-7540 or by email theresa_forte@sympatico.ca