Attractive Ways to Grow Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs in Your Garden Design

When planning your spring garden, consider these four strategies for integrating vegetables and fruits into your ornamental plantings

As life comes back into the garden in springiness , there ’s no time like the nowadays to focus on creating an outdoor world you’re able to savor for the coming year . bound is the idealistic fourth dimension to design , redesign , and plant life yourSouthern Californialandscape . In addition to tweak your garden for practical aim , like making it drouth tolerant and clime - change friendly , you may also be considering way to make your outdoor areas more beautiful and coloured . Do n’t overleap including edibles in the mix . Somevegetables and fruitsare as ornamental as traditional flowering garden plants . Here are some design ideas to convey your decorative and edible plants together in functional and beautiful ways .

Idea 1: Artichoke Plants for Unique Foliage and Flowers

bring big , bold , artichoke plantsto flank a stairway or way in the efflorescence garden , to hail an entry , or to make a command around a lamp , post , or other item in your landscape painting . Artichokeslove our red-hot sun and are remarkablydrought large-minded . recall to leave some of the delicious buds to flower out into their unique , galvanizing - anil blooms . They face like giant paintbrushes and , if provide to go to seminal fluid , station each source off on a journey around your garden on a silklike snowy parachute — perhaps finding the consummate position you had n’t consider . Tennessean seedlings are easy transplant to locations you prefer when belittled . When mature , the proud , bold leafage of this fast - grow 6 - human foot - tall edible is a must - have in the landscape .

Idea 2: Peppers Add a Pop of Color and Design Interest

Dot the view with colorful crotch hair ofpeppersto tot up color , interesting shapes , and food to a sundry flower garden . contrast foliage and cheerfully colourize fruits can line a walk or dress a garden bed . you may choose from a wide assortment of pepper that grow well in just about all region of our warm SoCal clime . Some will hold out to fruit into a 2d or third yr where wintertime are meek . take care for coloured , varicolored , or dark foliage ornamented with drop vivid black pepper for contrast in the blossom garden . dot in dwarf or giant varieties to vary heights and textures . Or try merge red , orangish , and yellow fruiting plants with large blocky , tiny circular , or long dangle peppers for artistic , bright accents . Then clean the peppers when mature for use in refreshed salad and recipe ; they will add a fiesta of colour and flavor to your meals .

Idea 3: Vining Plants Add Interest to Entrances and Archways

Dress up a landscape painting with mounting bean or even dangling tomato plant . Some yield and vegetable plants can offer prime and/or edibleseedpodsthat are as cosmetic as traditional heyday - garden climbers . Expand your choice ofvinesthat saving grace archways , enshroud wall or tree trunks , or constitute a hold out roof for a shade cover structure . Our long originate time of year makebeans , pea , andtomatoesreliable , edible , decorative residents even in the heyday garden . attend for beans and peas with red , pinkish , purple , white , and occasional yellow or bicolored miscellanea to add gloss through flowering to seedpods . Or prefer mellisonant fruits likegrapesand even the superfood goji berries as showy , edible climbers in your garden .

Idea 4: Build Unique Containers Mixed with Herbs, Annuals, and Edibles

sum up interior decoration or focal spot withherb pots , barrow , or other containers bursting with a mix brightannual flowersand comestible good . Interesting , colorful miscellaneous containers add interest to the garden design , offering a wide range of pick that can even have a virtual wallop . For representative , use a garden cart to easily croppotatoeswhile protecting them from our ravenous gophers . Or march colourful shuck of edible corn , Florence fennel , or feathery ferny Asparagus officinales plants in a run-in of big , colorful pots to line a pathway or to form a courtly sentry line along a flush garden . The container can protect their house physician from pick wildlife or robustious pets . And as a incentive , you could control the quality of your soil when gardening in container .

Have play and experiment . Spring is the sentence tosow seedsand pop in plants . Here in Southern California , we can grow decorative plants and victual all year around . Just commemorate that these fruit plants like a fair amount of sunshine . In the desert or canyon country , a little wraith during the hottest part of the day may be welcome to avoid burning . But all the plants advert will give you the best crops when they enjoy at least several hours of direct sunlight .

— Jane Gates is the proprietor of Gates & Croft Horticultural Design in Los Angeles and the author ofAll the Garden ’s a Stage : choose the Best Performing Plants for a Sustainable Garden .

Photos : Jane Gates

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