Beans twine gracefully up a tepee, holding high their colorful, fragrant, and edible blossoms for all to see. Delicious pods will soon follow.

If you want to start a food garden with your students but don’t have the space in your schoolyard for a traditional vegetable plot or fruit orchard, try your hands at edible landscaping: designing with plants that can do double duty as ornamentals and crops. Fortunately, there are hundreds of plants to choose from — you need only narrow the selection by choosing those that fit best within your microclimate and soil conditions. (You can also include some purely ornamental plants if you like.)

Unlike traditional food gardens, which are usually placed in lower traffic areas (such as behind the school or in a backyard), half the point of an edible landscape is that it's worth showing off! Include the school's main entrance or front yard in your plan, and use it as an opportunity to educate the community at large about the wonders of ornamental food gadrening.

The Benefits of Edible Landscapes

Pairing this purple sage with contrasting calendula creates a feast for the eyes and provides seasonings for meals.

Think about it: Blending edible and ornamental plants in landscapes is nature's way, and for most of human history, gardeners have followed this great example. It's just within the last century that Americans began to grow fruits and vegetable in their own plots and to confine landscaping to just lawns, shade trees, and non-edible foundation plantings. With overwhelming research touting the nutritional benefits of fruits and vegetables, and rising concerns about the food-related health crisis in the United States, it’s the perfect time to come back to our horticultural roots and reintroduce crops to the landscape.

To recap, edible landscapes are beneficial because:

If it were used on a large scale in urban areas, edible landscaping could transform the diets of city dwellers. Many urban residents have limited access to grocery stores and farmers markets and instead buy much of their food at convenience stores stocked with unhealthful snack and fast foods. Edible landscaping expands the area available for urban agriculture beyond community gardens and increases the overall local production of fresh fruits and vegetables. Plus, it decreases transportation costs, which should in turn reduce food prices.

The Challenges

Like all forms of gardening, edible landscaping comes with a few challenges. Most crop-oriented gardens are laid out in block shapes with simple rows to minimize maintenance and maximize harvest. Rows ease the effort of planting, thinning, watering, weeding, and harvesting. Their grid-like simplicity makes it easier to lay out the garden and space plants evenly. And they usually require a different kind of maintenance plan and schedule than crop-style gardening.

Additional challenges:

• Most fruit and vegetable plants need six to eight hours of full sun and well-drained, fertile soil for a good harvest. Not all sites provide these conditions.
• Edible plants may attract animals, such as birds, rabbits, squirrels, deer, woodchucks, rats, and raccoons that will compete with you for the harvest. It's easier to fence a single garden plot than to manage animal pests over a scattered planting.
• Most edible plants need more attention than the common low-maintenance shrubs, trees, and groundcovers, including regular pruning, supplemental watering, soil amendment, and frequent monitoring during harvest. (If your peak growing and maintenance season occurs while school is in session, this could be considered an advantage because it gives students opportunities to interact with plants in diverse ways.)
• You're committed to two goals: good food and good aesthetics. It may take more time and effort to fulfill this dual objective.

Planning Basics

Visualize a plan that maximizes the use of space in an attractive way. (Click for larger image. Used by permission - see below)

Be flexible with the design, size, and shape of your edible landscape so it can fit your needs. If your soil isn’t adequate, you can use raised beds or containers and fill them with good soil. If you have only a small porch in the sun, you can create window boxes or use hanging baskets. If the overall square footage is limited, you can “grow up” by plant vining fruits and vegetables on arbors and trellises.

As with any garden plan, one key to success is choosing the right plants for your location. Look for varieties that grow well in your region and are disease and pest resistant. Your local Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners are a good source of this information.

Select plant varieties that have a range of harvest dates that also correspond with the time your youth gardeners will be around to enjoy their produce. For example, you might learn that you can harvest strawberries, lettuce, and carrots before summer break arrives, and when students return in the fall, they’ll be able to enjoy apples, persimmons, and pecans.

Be sure to research growing habits carefully before purchasing specimens for your landscape. Edible plants may have unique needs that common ornamentals do not. For instance, many fruits are not self-pollinating, so you’ll need to install more plant or variety to ensure fruit production.

Resources

Plant List: Here's a list of plants to consider. Please pay special attention to the caution statements.

For more details and plant information, we recommend the following Web sites.

General Edible Landscaping Information:
Marion Owen on Edible Landscaping
Ohio State University Extension
University of Florida Extension

Specific Crops/Plants:
Fruits and Nuts for Edible Landscaping (PDF)
Growing Edible Flowers in Your Garden
NGA Food Garden Guides

Edible landscape design donated by Tom Dunbar FASLA of Dunbar/Jones for the Des Moines Park and Recreation Department's "Digging Deeper" food security project. Used by permission.