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More and more people are moving away from the idea of simple lawns and towards making their outdoor space into more natural landscapes including useful, even edible plants! A lot of edible plants happen to be quite aesthetically pleasing; some vegetables and herbs also have ornamental varieties. It’s great to have your own vegetables - fuel costs are driving up the price of all food products, and produce is no exception.

The majority of people who build edible landscapes utilize perennial vegetables, since they return every spring with no need to replant. After they’re planted, they’ll go on providing beauty and food for as long as you tend them.

Generally, just some water and fertilizer is all they require, plus some trimming, weeding, and pest control. There is an abundance of vegetable types that will continue to feed you for years to come. Perennial vegetables will die in the late fall, but in the springtime they’ll come back and undergo a new growth cycle.

Perhaps you are a little leery of this idea - after all, doesn’t a vegetable garden require a lot of care? This is certainly the case for traditional vegetable gardens; however, edible landscapes require only a little bit more work than other landscape plants!

Regular landscaping can be replaced with many varieties of edible plants. For example, plant fruit trees rather than non-fruit bearing varieties. To replace ground covers and shrubs many perennial herbs are possibilities. Also, ornamental vegetables can be an option instead of flowers and borders.

Try combining edible plants with ordinary flowers and ornamental plants for an attractive arrangement. Many edible plants, particularly herbs, are good complements to a flower garden. You can blend many varieties of plants together to create a distinctive and appealing landscape.

The use of curly parsley enhances a variety of plants. It looks beautiful when planted in combination with other edibles, like strawberries, or flowers such as pansies and lobelia. Low shrubbery, such as sage and oregano, will add a practical beauty to your landscaping. They compliment your landscape greatly when used as edging in front of larger bushes.

Planting beds of leaf lettuces can easily create accent areas. Edge with a border grass and then fill the plant bed with your choice of multi colored varieties of leaf lettuce.

There are quite a few plants whose flowers are edible. Some of this vegetation also has other elements that can be eaten. When in bloom, these plants can be very arresting as a landscape component. For example, sugar snap peas have beautiful flowers in pink, purple and white, and after blooming they turn out tasty peas.

Fava beans grow white and red flowers. The purple globe-shaped flowers produced by chives make them stand out from other herbs. The blossoms on the dill plant are a delightful shade of yellow. Savory nasturtium flowers come in a wide array of bright colors. The herb sage produces purple and blue flower blossoms. You can also find blue and purple blooms in salvia.

Perennial vegetables and herbs are great to plant in edible gardens, since they dont call for much maintenance. Perennial broccoli, dandelions, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, sorrel, artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes, chives, fennel, garlic chives, ginger, and asparagus are excellent examples.