The past two years I have been working on a herb/perennial garden right next to my kitchen window. I took some pictures of it yesterday in hopes to encourage everyone to work in edibles to your landscaping. Herbs are a wonderful way to get a start gardening. I have found them to be extremely hardy and productive, but they are also quite pretty and can fit in well with landscaping. There was very little landscaping on this property when we bought it, but one of the things I was thrilled to discover was a rosemary in the front yard. I love being able to snip a little fresh rosemary year around!
A large yard is not necessary in order to have a garden. Our very first little house had a small and mostly shaded yard. There was a tiny 3'x3' ish sized bed right next to our tiny concrete patio, but it was plenty of room to put a few tomatoes in. When we moved back to the Dallas area, we had the big house on the tiny lot, yet even there I planted a few tomato plants in pots. The kids were 1, 3 and 5 at that point so it was not the season of focusing on gardening, but the girls loved their tomato plants. Somehow we even managed to keep them alive all summer and still had tomatoes in November!
If you really want to get brave, why not sneak a tomato into your landscaped bed? I ran out of room for all of my tomato plants this year, so I have put several into my new kitchen window bed. You can choose a patio variety that is meant for growing in pots or use a bamboo pole and keep the plant thinned so as to not look unruly.
Here is a picture of the bed two weeks ago, our chicken coop in the backgroud:
Here is a different angle, taken yesterday. I can't believe what a difference having my new irrigation in place as well as a nice soaking rain made in how much it has grown in the past two weeks!!
The pink flower border is purslane. It is an edible flower, but I have not yet been brave enough to try it, however, after reading this link about purslane, I might just try! Here is a close up of the beautiful, delicate flowers:
Even if we never get brave enough to eat it, the flowers are doing a wonderful job at attracting beneficial insects such as bees! The flowers come in many varieties of pink, as well as yellow, white, and multi-colored.
Some of the decorative peppers. The skinny ones in the background are not spicy and the kids love to come eat them straight from the garden, they have a bell pepper flavor and are actually quite good. The dark plant's peppers are supposed to be very hot. I am not sure that I am in love with growing peppers, they seem to like lots and lots of water.
This climber is called Malabar Spinach. We have not tried it yet, as there is just now enough to harvest for a meal. Maybe I should throw some in with our salad tonight!
Here is where I have tucked in the tomatoes along with some swiss chard, yellow and red varieties. I must confess we have never actually eaten the chard. But, I think it is a beautiful plant to grow and one of these days I am going to try cooking some up! I also have some in my main garden beds that grew from March until the extremely cold middle of December that we had last year. Much to my surprise, the roots that overwintered in the garden began sprouting new leaves this spring! I do love plants that require little effort and keep things looking pretty even if we are too chicken to try eating it.
The tall, pointy plant back behind is another in the easy growing, though non-edible category. It is a calla lily that I put in when there was nothing but weeds growing here. It was so neglected for two years that it amazes me every time I look at it that I have not killed it! Though you can't see them, this year I planted four more calla lilies next to it in hopes they will perform like the first one has!
And lastly, here are the tomatoes with a basil plant tucked in between. I hesitate to encourage you to grow a tomato in your front yard and then post this picture because these two have gotten quite unruly while I neglected them. The bamboo looks terrible because it needs to be replace with one sturdy pole rather than the several skinny ones I attempted to make work while we were on vacation. I will replace those poles and trim out some of the excess leaves.
The large green mass on the far right of the image is some sort of weed that is popping up everywhere in this bed. I have no idea what it will turn out to be, but for now I am letting this cluster reside and pulling the rest.
And that is the tour of the non-herb edibles. Look for a part two with the herbs and perennials.