Cool-season edibles offer tasty beauty
Veggies, herbs can be dazzling in landscaping
The cool-season vegetable garden can be one of incredible beauty, all the while providing tasty produce.
Such is the case with the Columbus Botanical Garden in Columbus, Ga. Its Sally Adams vegetable terraces, located adjacent to the old historic Gin House, were designed by the renowned landscape architecture firm Studio Outside Landscape Architecture of Dallas.
The stone terraces planted with seasonal vegetables are always worthy of being photographed and dazzle as part of the overall landscape. Best known as a tourist stop, the owners make regular contributions of produce to Mercy Med for distribution to people in need.
The terraces are planted by volunteers under the watchful eye of the director and have become a hit with the local community. Recently I attended a pre-gala party just before sunset and was mesmerized by their beauty.
There was a stunning array of color and texture provided by cabbage, kale, collards, mustard, lettuce and chard, along with a tantalizing selection of herbs. The volunteers have supplemented the plantings with Cool Wave pansies that will soon cascade over the rock walls.
Even if you don’t have a dedicated vegetable garden like the one in Columbus, you can grow a bounty of tasty veggies, incorporating them in the landscape, mixed containers and even baskets. These crops are so wonderfully ornamental even the toughest homeowners association “police force” will approve.
The edible landscape concept is a scorching hot trend not just for the culinary artist in the kitchen, but for the Monet-like designer gardening outdoors.
Brie Arthur, a rock-star horticulturist and friend, has recently written a book titled “The Foodscape Revolution.” You can put her tips and techniques in place immediately or get prepared for spring.
In Columbus, this concept gets applied to mixed containers at the finest shopping centers and in high-profile entrances to neighborhoods and upscale apartment complexes. If you are thinking I am just talking kale and cabbage, I am not, although they are certainly high on the list. There are a lot more edible beauties just sitting outside those favorite boutiques.
You are likely to see collards with pansies, Swiss chard or Red Giant mustard with snapdragons, violas with red leaf lettuce and architecturally wonderful plants like cardoon and dinosaur kale. Such is the wonder and fun once you, too, start growing cool-season vegetables.
All of these cool-season vegetables love those light and fluffy soil mixes you find in mixed containers. In the landscape, they will thrive as well as long as you have good fertile, well-drained soil and plenty of sun to allow them to really perform up to your expectations.
The Garden Guy was raised in the South, and when it comes to eating, the thought of fried catfish, cornbread and a heaping pile of mustard greens, collards or Swiss chard cooked like spinach will trump landscape beauty on many occasions.
Those in zones 7-10 have a lot of edible landscape opportunities before spring planting. Those in colder zones should try these as window sill-type crops.
Visit your favorite garden center this weekend. You’ll find plants that will allow you to dress up the landscape before the holidays while creating some incredible combinations with edibles.