EDIBLE ORNAMENTALS
I have discovered that I do some of my best garden work when I am motivated by a grand scheme or a master plan. Last year the “garden perfection plan” impelled me to take one year and make the garden as close to perfect as possible. That plan doesn’t really end until February, but it’s time to think ahead to the next big scheme. I’ve already decided that next year’s theme will be “ornamental edibles.”
If I could only appropriate my neighbor’s property, I could create the potager or ornamental vegetable garden of my dreams. My potager, which I have planned down to the last detail on nights when I can’t fall asleep, would be hexagonal with raised, pie-shaped beds filled with various vegetables, fruits and herbs. It would be surrounded by a beautiful but prickly Rosa rugosa hedge to deter at least some of the local varmints. The central feature would be a solar-powered fountain created by a coppersmith and shaped like a giant cabbage. The shiny copper would age to a lovely and appropriate verdigris color, blending neatly with the surrounding. My husband had the temerity to laugh at the fountain idea, but I can’t think of anything more appropriate.
It’s highly likely that my neighbor would resist the idea of having her property appropriated, even though I would be perfectly willing to let her do whatever she wanted with her own house. Therefore, I had to think of an alternative. It is a good thing that I don’t take any of those much-advertised prescription sleep aids; otherwise I would never have worked out my new edible ornamental plan.
I don’t have enough sunny space to create a dedicated potager, but I can incorporate edible crops throughout my planting scheme. Since I already grow lots of plants on my sunny back porch, a couple of large pots of lettuce will blend right in. This will help deter the rabbits and groundhogs, who aren’t disposed to hike up the back steps. I will figure a way to cover the lettuce pots securely at night to deter raccoons, for whom steps are no problem. Of course the local raccoons are generally much more interested in the buffet experience that they get when they topple my garbage cans, but you can’t be too careful.
I can interplant green and purple basil around my roses and other annual and perennial plants as rodents won’t eat the basil or any other members of the mint family. As long as the next generation of raccoons doesn’t figure out how to make pesto sauce, my basil should be perfectly safe.
A vegetable garden isn’t complete without tomatoes, and I have often thought that tomatoes could be grown on attractive tuteurs rather than gangly tomato cages. After all, a sturdy tuteur can hold a reasonably robust ornamental, so it should also be able to support a tomato plant. I have a couple of fancy tuteurs with wirework details that will be perfect for the experiment. Beans, especially pole beans, might also thrive if the vines were trained up decorative supports.
I have always wanted to grow potatoes and strawberries. Potatoes take a fair amount of space, which makes me resume casting covetous glances at my neighbor’s property. I’ll have to give the idea more thought. The strawberries can go in one or possibly two extra-large strawberry jars that I am planning to buy. The back porch may be the safest place for them as well, though I can also imagine a pair of handsome jars flanking the entrance to my upper back garden.
I would love to have some cucurbits or members of the squash family. Zucchini is almost a suburban cliché–albeit a delicious one–but I may succumb to it anyway. Even though my college-age daughter will be away from home when much of the planting and harvesting takes place, she still wants pumpkins. I am not sure how I’ll fit in a pumpkin vine, but if I manage it, the pumpkin will be one of the smaller, tastier types rather than a Halloween behemoth.
My edible ornamental plans seem to be getting bigger and bigger, but after all, it’s January, the perfect time to think big and do little. By the time I get down to ordering, I will have tamed my wilder plant acquisition urges and considered the projected workload, honing down my seed and plant wish list as necessary.
Happily, one edible plant is already in my garden. It’s a wild blackberry, “planted” by birds and tended by no one. Every year the offspring of last year’s blackberry rises from the earth and begins climbing its way up one of the big holly trees on the south side of the house. By mid-summer we have tasty berries for nothing. I think I’ll really appreciate that next year as I struggle over my tuteurs and tomatoes.