By ANNE MARIE CHAKER
Jamie Marglin ripped out her swimming pool, ordered 30 yards of soil and spent $4,000 on new plantings for her gardens, which span one acre in Ossining, N.Y., on a cliff overlooking the Hudson River.
“The color palette for the entire garden is going to be a symphony of silvers, blues, purples and ivories, with dashes of yellow and splashes of reds,” says Ms. Marglin.
Some of the plantings will be traditional flowering favorites. But most will be plants you can eat. Four weeks ago, Ms. Marglin planted rhubarb, with its lush leaves and burgundy stems, in front of a woodland border of lilacs, irises and hydrangeas.
A big trend in landscaping is adding edible plants as well as vegetables, grapes, daylilies, fruit trees, cabbage and spices to your flower beds or planters. Leslie Yazel has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Mike Belleme for The Wall Street Journal.
“They’re living together,” Ms. Marglin says. “And it’s gorgeous.”
Bucking the notion that vegetable gardens should be banished to an out-of-view corner of the backyard, more gardeners are mixing edible plants throughout the landscape in ways that are inventive, decorative and sometimes stunning. Flower beds are edged with frilly lettuces, tomatoes are climbing up front-door arbors, and strawberries are spilling out of window boxes.
The idea—known in garden-design circles as “edible landscaping”—is to find ways to marry veggies, fruit trees and berry bushes with ornamental plants and flowers in ways that complement both.
At Chanticleer, a public garden in Wayne, Pa., pansies and violas are planted alongside lettuces, mustards and cabbages. This year, a flower bed at the entrance pairs luminescent Brazen Brass mustard with a peach-cupped Katie Heath daffodil, salmon-colored Serenity Rose Magic African daisies and copper-colored wallflowers. The effect, says staff horticulturist Jonathan Wright, is “electric.”
Some home gardeners got into edible landscaping by accident. Geoff Boyer, a financial planner in Allentown, Pa., removed a large holly tree last summer, leaving a gaping hole in the front yard. He couldn’t decide what to plant in the space and, as a temporary measure, put in three bushy tomato plants.
Not only did he like how they looked, but his family actually ate the tomatoes—something they rarely did in the summer heat when the vegetable garden was 100 feet back.
This year, he is planning to go further, threading pumpkin and gourd vines through the front-yard flower beds.
The orange fruit will echo fall-planted mums and complement purple asters, he hopes. He also is considering a clump of corn, to provide a vertical dimension and as a stand-in for grassy ornamentals. “It’s just a different texture,” Mr. Boyer says.
Vegetable gardens weren’t a prized feature of the postwar suburbs, and instead considered a sign of hardship or low status. Nor were vegetable plants—usually arranged in straight rows like food-producing soldiers—valued for aesthetic qualities.
“Why? They’re beautiful plants,” asks Rosalind Creasy, author of the book “Edible Landscaping,” published 30 years ago and released in a new edition in late 2010.
Photos: Gardeners Turn to Tasty Plantings
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Mike Belleme for The Wall Street Journal
Sheila Dunn and Larry Hyman prune the Concord grapevine sharing an arbor with wisteria at their home in Weaverville, N.C.
An estimated 30 million households had a vegetable garden in 2011, a 20% increase over five years earlier, according to the nonprofit National Gardening Association, in Burlington, Vt.
Sabrena Schweyer, an Akron, Ohio, landscape designer, says eight new clients have requested edibles in some form in their landscapes. People are becoming “more adventurous in their eating,” she says. “Turnips are becoming hip again.”
Whether it’s unusual heirloom tomatoes, such as Aunt Ruby’s German Green or Yellow Pear, or purple-leaved Black Pearl peppers, which were introduced by the U.S. National Arboretum in 2006, interesting-looking vegetable varieties are more widely available.
“Growers are growing what they think will sell,” says Margie Grace, principal with Grace Design Associates Inc. in Santa Barbara, Calif. “With that amazing assortment, you can really create a composition.”
Edible landscaping probably isn’t the best fit for gardeners looking for a low-maintenance option.
In warm weather, some leafy greens need to be replaced because they “bolt”—flowering, going to seed and acquiring a bitter taste. Tomato plants can start to look ragged by August. Little hands that pick yummy fruit leave blank spots on the canvas.
Susie Dowd Markarian, a Santa Rosa, Calif., landscape designer, says she creates as many as 20 edible landscapes a year.
“I have seen success when people realize what they’re in for,” she says. With less-experienced clients, her advice is to think twice. “Are you going to water, weed and take care of it?” she says.
There are other pitfalls that can thwart a novice and leave well-intended plantings looking sad. Lettuces usually shouldn’t be planted near lavender: Leafy greens like nutrient-rich soil, while lavenders do better in drier conditions.
A hedge of blueberries may require plantings of at least two varieties, for better pollination and fruiting. In order to bear fruit, hardy female kiwi vines typically need a non-fruit-bearing male pollinator nearby.
“Most of those mistakes won’t be fatal,” says Sheila Dunn, a retired microbiologist whose gardens, in Weaverville, N.C., are filled with lavenders, herbs and more than 50 fruit- and berry-bearing trees, bushes and vines.
Two years ago, she began experimenting with unusual fruit trees and bushes, planting them along three terrace levels in front of her house. She selected plants bearing fruits that are either expensive to buy or hard to find in stores.
The Asian persimmon trees sounded so exotic, she was surprised they would grow at her home. But not only is the fruit delicious and sweet, “it’s the most carefree fruit tree you can imagine,” she says.
Two of the persimmon trees are planted at the top terrace, along with a hardy kiwi vine dangling from the deck above. Beneath the kiwi, she planted four lavender bushes, which do double duty: The silvery-blue foliage contrasts with the dark foliage of the kiwi, and it camouflages the vine’s bare stem.
Separately, an arbor anchored on the top terrace offers two seasons of interest: A purple wisteria blooms in spring, and a Concord grapevine provides armfuls of dark-blue fruit in the summer.
Not only are edible and nonedible combinations visually appealing, but Ms. Dunn believes fruits and veggies are less pest-prone than they would be if they were planted on their own.
Many insects that are beneficial to plants, such as ladybugs, flock to flowers—and will eat the pests that would otherwise destroy the vegetables.
“It makes it much easier to garden organically when things are not in perfect little rows,” she says.
In recent weeks Ms. Dunn has planted two Chinese Jujube trees on tricky cliffs flanking each side of the driveway, which in a few years will produce exotic date-like fruits.
“The fun of it is that as you meander through the property you can reach out and eat,” she says. “It’s a tactile experience.”
Write to Anne Marie Chaker at anne-marie.chaker@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared April 25, 2012, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Who Put Lettuce in My Daffodils?.
