Growing Your Own Edible Garden for Year-Round Flavor and Color
With the increased demand of food resources worldwide, it is perhaps time to consciously use our own plots of land to feed ourselves and our communities.
Using land for food production is not a new concept—but what if we could have gardens that provide both seasonal food as well as aesthetics?
There are lots of great edible plants that look great year round. Usually, these are in the form of fruit trees and edible berry shrubs.
Fruit Trees
There are a variety of fruit trees, including grafted apple trees with multiple varieties on a single trunk for cross-pollination, as well as espalier pears and “step-over” apples, which can serve as natural fencing or hedging.
Berry Shrubs
For vibrant colours, there are some wonderful edible berry shrubs that have great fall colours in their leaves, such as the high bush blueberries and the haskap berry (the honeyberry). The highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) has bright red, cranberry-looking clusters of berries and an equally showy red fall leaf colour. These berries can be seeded and made into sour jelly for meat dishes.
There are also full-sized and dwarf-sized sumac shrubs that have fuzzy fruiting bodies. These berries can be dried and ground into a spice for flavouring meat and potatoes, popular in Middle Eastern cooking.
Berry Trees
The serviceberry is one of my favourite edible berry trees and there are a few cultivars of this native tree to North America. They have small white clusters of flowers on its branches before they leaf in early spring, a crop of red to deep purple berries in June, to a flaming bright display of orangey-red colours in the fall. I’ve planted one in each house I’ve ever lived in!
Vines
Have you ever come across an arctic kiwi vine? There is a variety of this vine that has beautiful white and pink leaves scattered throughout its wall of greens. You will need a male and a female plant to have fruit.
Vegetable Gardens
Of course, you can plant annual vegetables and herbs in amongst your gardens that provide colourful leaves and stems, like purple cabbage and purple broccolini with soft yellow flowers. After harvesting its spires, an asparagus fern can continue growing into beautiful, airy light green screens, serving as an alternative to ornamental grasses while still producing food!
Find more plants online, and let your imagination run along with your stomach. You can start incorporating edibles into your landscape to harvest and enjoy on your dining table this year!
