Gardening is an important part of many people’s lives for good reason. Growing your own fresh produce reaps many benefits: being out in the sun lets you soak up vitamin D, for example. Plus, cultivating edible plants encourages you to eat healthier fruits and vegetables, too.
However, there is another kind of gardening that, with thoughtful planning and care, can lead to even more benefits: edible landscaping.
Edible landscaping, or foodscaping, is simply incorporating food plants into the overall design of your landscape. Think of it as a combination of landscaping and farming. It celebrates how beautiful edible plants can be, and embraces both their utility as food and their aesthetic features.
An edible landscape might have fruit trees and berry bushes incorporated among the flowers. It may have herbs and veggies planted along a walkway or elsewhere out in the open around your home.
This type of landscaping has various environmental benefits. For example, integrating native food plants into your yard reduces the need for excessive watering and fertilizing that a grass lawn might require. It can also have benefits on your health and wallet. If you grow your own fruits and vegetables, that’s less money you need to spend on produce at the store. More time spent in the garden has also been linked to lower levels of stress.
One of the most common questions when starting an edible landscape is: how do I keep deer and other wildlife from munching on the plants? Plants such as leafy greens will quickly attract hungry animals if left in the open. Thankfully, there are other plants that fare quite well when planted in the open alongside other
vegetation.
Here are some of the best plants for an edible landscape:
- Tomatoes
- Onions
- Kale
- Beans
- Artichokes
- Eggplants
- Peppers
- Strawberries
- Blueberries
- Fruit Trees
When starting out, mix in just a few food plants with ornamental plants such as flowers, shrubs, and grasses. Make sure your chosen area gets a few hours of sunlight per day. Then, as you grow more confident, you can add in more edible plants over time.
When designing the landscape, you can have fun with color combinations and plant placement. For example, choose chives, red kale, and eggplant for lots of purple in your yard.
Make sure to include a walkway for accessibility. As your plants grow, you want to keep it easy to reach everything for easy watering and maintenance.
To increase the health and efficiency of your edible landscape, you can practice companion planting. This involves planting certain compatible plants in the same area to maximize their growth.
For a list of great companion planting ideas along with more tips and tricks for your edible landscape plants, see the infographic below from Angi. Before long, you’ll enjoy a beautiful yard full of nutritious, homegrown produce!
