North Coast Gardening

Using Color Echoes to Work Edibles Into Your Landscape

Ivette Soler’s new book, The Edible Front Yard, tackles the question of how to incorporate edibles and veggies into your landscape without having the whole thing look messy, or rigidly planned like a farm.

How do you do that? She explains:

The successful edible front garden all comes down to the right plant in the right place. We have to be brutally selective, following the same kind of rules used by ornamental gardeners, when choosing which edibles to plant out front. Yes, these extra generous plants do us the honor of feeding us, but when they are placed out front and center they have another set of standards they need to meet.

Ivette has four criteria that edible plants must meet to make it into her landscape:

Ivette Soler’s Rules For Front Yard Edibles

photo copyright Ivette Soler
Photo from The Edible Front Yard

1. The entire plant must have a pleasing form – it cannot stand on the merits of its flowers (or vegetable or fruit) alone.

2. It has to give me at least two reasons to plant it (such as the color and form, or texture and seedpods).

3. Its leaves must hold up for the entire growing season. Some edibles have leaves that are susceptible to mildews, or are such heavy feeders that the foliage is just worn out by the end of the season. In the backyard, you can deal with it. In the front yard, plant something else.

4. If you must plant less ornamental edibles in the front yard because you have no other suitable space, pay extra attention to your hardscape. It’s a lot easier to overlook wilted cucumber leaves if they are supported by a beautiful trellis.

photo copyright Ivette Soler (3)
Photo from The Edible Front Yard

If you have an existing landscape, one of the easiest ways of introducing edibles into the garden is by looking for themes in the plants you already have, and choosing edible plants for your garden using the same criteria you would use with ornamentals – see Ivette’s advice above.

Do you have a lot of plants with purple foliage? If so, try Redbor kale, red Swiss chard, purple cabbage, purple basil, or Sunshine Blue blueberry which has a hint of purpled bronze to the leaves. By echoing a color found elsewhere in the garden, you can bring a sense of continuity to your garden and make the edibles seem an integral part of your landscape.

Incredible Edibles author Ivette Solar's garden.
Photo from The Edible Front Yard

Here are some examples of using color echoes with edibles:

Golden oregano:

Nepeta and Golden Oregano, May Night Salvia and Rosemary, Japanese Forest Grass

Golden oregano, Oreganum vulgare ‘Aurea’, is a natural partner with catmint, Nepeta faassennii, because catmint helps attract pollinators to your veggies (which means more yield!), as well as beneficial insects that prey on aphids. Even though the oregano is golden, it tastes every bit as good as the usual kind, and the catmint can be used in tea to help you sleep.

Meadow sage, Salvia x sylvestris ‘May Night’, is another that attracts beneficials and pollinators to the garden, and it has a great color echo with the catmint. Lastly, Japanese forest grass or Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ is an easy-to-grow grass with a soft texture and golden color similar to that of the oregano.

Artichoke:

Ivory Correa, Artichoke, Glacier Blue Euphorbia

Artichoke, Cynara scolymus, has an architectural habit and silvery-blue foliage color that looks great with a variety of plants.  To help it fit into your landscape, try planting it among white Australian fuchsia, Correa ‘Ivory Bells’. The light silvery sheen to its leaves echoes the artichoke’s foliage, and the flaring bellflowers have a shape like an upside-down artichoke plant.

Blue Spurge, Euphorbia characias ‘Glacier Blue’ has an architectural habit of its own, with great alien-like blooms in cream and blue. The foliage, seen above, is edged in cream and shares a blue-silver tone with the artichoke.

Kiwi:

Stones, Kiwi, Carex

Kiwi, Actinidia spp, vines are crazy, rampant things that will eat your home, your shed, and your fenceline if you’re not careful. But if you have room for two of these giants, a male and a female, you can have this gorgeous, tropical-looking vine AND more fruit than you and all your acquaintances can eat.

It’s seen here with bronze sedge, Carex testacea, and a cool container “planting” of stones. Both echo the color of a kiwi’s fuzz.

Huckleberry:

Actaea, Huckleberry, Chondropetalum

Huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum, is a native to the Pacific Northwest which produces shiny black berries. The berries are tart but have a fun flavor for jams or pies if you add a truckload of sugar.

Here it’s paired with black snakeroot, Actaea simplex ‘Brunette’, a hardy perennial that shines in the part shade locations huckleberry prefers. Cape rush, Chondropetalum tectorum, echoes the dark huckleberries with the deep brown papery bracts along each stem.

Ready to plant some edibles among your ornamentals?

Pick up a copy of Ivette’s new book, The Edible Front Yard, for her inspiring take on how you can grow your own food without sacrificing beauty.

For more on this topic, check out the other posts in this month’s Garden Designers Roundtable:

Ivette Soler : The Germinatrix : Los Angeles, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In the Garden : Los Altos, CA

Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT »

Shirley Bovshow’s Eden Makers Blog

Genevieve

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32 responses to “Using Color Echoes to Work Edibles Into Your Landscape”

  1. I love the golden oregano combination and think it would look wonderful in a garden, but I’d be petrified to plant oregano straight into my garden. I’d have to do the old plant-in-a-pot-and-sink-it-into-the-ground trick with that one.

    • LOL, Erin. I understand entirely. In my climate, it spreads, but in a clump, so as long as I give it ample space it doesn’t get too crazy! I have seen someone else plant it right at a roses’ feet, and let me tell you – my hands and arms were so scratched up after trying to get it all out of that rose that I nearly vowed never to plant either roses OR oregano again!

  6. Gen, thank you for the sneak preview of Ivette’s book (looks fab!) and also your recommendations for plant combinations. I love your idea of using color as the initial key to integrating edibles into an ornamental garden.

    • Jocelyn, you will love Ivette’s book – I think even with our differing climates there is a ton of great info and lots of plant and design rec’s you can take advantage of.

  7. GEN!!! I am SO incredibly honored – what an ODE to my book you wrote! And I love the combinations you created, especially because they include plants that are for cooler climates! I am bookmarking this and will cuddle up to it often!!!
    XOXOIvette

    • Ivette, I haven’t even written my full-on review yet! Still looking forward to that soon. I ADORE your book and have been busily re-designing areas of my garden to incorporate MORE food since reading! I love that food plants often look so good with the lush tropical look I enjoy most in my home garden.

  9. Amazing color combos Gen, and almost all are hardy to my garden! Great advice to build on themes already existing when adding edibles, and advice I will follow as I add them here. Great post!

    • Thanks, Scott! I tried to add a few more hardy ones, though I usually garden a bit at the edge of my own zone. I don’t know what I’d do if I ever moved to a cold place – stalk your blog for tips, I am sure!

  10. The lovely thing about GDRT post days is that it is like opening a box of chocs. Guess you guys say candy! And each sweet is different. Your post which majors on the plant associations thing is genius. People will find your combinations inspirational!
    Thanks and best wishes
    R

  11. Hi Gen, What a fun post! I love your suggestions for color combos, especially the golden oregano and nepeta. And I love the color of those huckleberries, they look like they’d make a great addition to floral arrangements too.

  12. Front yard edibles becoming main stream is so very exciting. There are infinite ornamental possibilities……..nasturtium trailing over a wall with cucumbers…….red beet foliage with orange diablo cosmos…….strawberries as a ground cover…….blueberries as a hedge……..dolichos lablab covering a trellis………

    I also would suggest that irrigating a food source is more important than simply irrigating the color annuals provide, thus the intermingling plays an important role for the water conservationist.

    Slow food here we come ~ Bloom On!

  15. Hi Gen-
    Thanks for the intro to Ivette’s book. I agree wholeheartedly with Ivette about the litmus test edible plants have to pass to be used in the front yard. There is no reason why vegetable garden can’t be beautiful and functional. I enjoyed the color and plant combinations. Great book. I must get my hands on it!
    Shirley

    • Shirley, you are so right. I really loved Ivette’s “what NOT to plant in the front yard” section in the book. Good reality check on which plants don’t pass the test.

  16. Wonderful advice Gen, both yours and Ivette’s. And to prove I’m not just saying that, I’ve been thinking about getting rid of the agapanthus ‘Summer Gold’ in my front yard that’s next to my catmint. It grows too slow and looks ratty all winter. There is not enough sun anywhere in my backyard for veggies or herbs, so I’m going to mass a boatload of golden oregano in the front next to my catmint instead!

  19. You are amazing, Gen. Truly one of the best posts yet! I love the color echoes you created and want them ALL for my garden!! Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic!!!

  20. What a great idea to include pics of ornamental plant partners for certain edibles. Or vice versa! I also really enjoyed your mini-review of Ivette’s book.

  21. i like the rules to an extent, but feel that one is missing. grow what you like to eat and will grow well in your climate.

    i also think that choosing foliage that stays good all season is great for design, but takes away a bit from the point of the edible garden, which is harvesting the foliage and/or plant to eat (it’s quite possible i’m misinterpreting the rules). got a chance to see the author at the seattle garden show and was impressed with her passion for front yard gardening and got some great ideas from her seminar.

    great ideas on this blog. i love my huckleberry bushes in the front yard.