Edible Landscaping

I'm a big fan of edible landscaping--that is incorporating fruit trees and plants into garden beds along with strictly ornamental ones.

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In our developed garden beds some of the edibles we've included are: 4 blueberry plants, 2 evergreen huckleberries, 3 lingonberries, 1 rhubarb, 2 gooseberries, several fruit trees (apple, Asian pear, pear and fig), kiwi, Oregon grape, salal and mint. These edibles grow near or alongside plants that you would expect to see in a NW garden--lilacs, irises, rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, etc and they're not ugly or strange looking at all!In fact they are quite beautiful as you can see from the photo above.

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Other edibles you can include in your landscaped areas are the many herbs -- just make sure you note carefully their requirements for light, size, moisture and soil preference (in other words don't put a herb that likes to be kept on the dry side next to strawberries which require more water).

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If you are dealing with a small space (like an urban garden), it is good to know that many fruit trees are available in dwarf and semi-dwarf sizes. These can be planted closer together then your standard fruit trees and you will still have sizable harvests! This is what we mostly have here--even our mini orchard which has 13 more fruit and nut trees is made up of these (well except for one but more about that later). By pruning these trees we've been able to keep them all at reasonable sizes---this makes it easier to care for them, pick their fruit and conserves space as I've noted. The only exception for us has been our 4-way sweet cherry which, even though it was marked as being a smaller tree, just keeps growing up, and up... and up! We think it is most likely a standard. The 4 way cherry brings me to another point--there are 4 different varieties of cherries that grow on this one tree! This can be a space saver you might be interested in too :)

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Edible landscaping works for us--and will also work for those of you who dwell in urban areas (albeit on a smaller scale then we have here). I invite you to do a 'google' search for this term if you are interested in learning more, or leave me a comment. One word of warning---for those with small children. If you are including edible plants with ornamental, poisonous plants (such as rhodies) you will obviously have to teach your children what can be eaten and what can't (but then you already knew that one:) )

Blessings, Aimee

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Note: Please forgive me if this post sounds odd; it's really early in the AM here and I think well past the time I should have gone to bed:) I will include some photos of our edible landscaped areas in time but right now we're working on them to get them back in shape (and I hate showing the world my weeds; it's just too embarrassing)!

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Here is one site that looked interesting. Out of Ohio....

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There are also good books available on this subject. This author's book was the one that really helped me get into this type of gardening. The link above is to her website which looks as it might be worth spending a lot of time at :)

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Photo: evergreen huckleberry (we have had one of these in our Japanese-style garden for years; this is a new one)