What edible plants offer year-round visual interest?

By choosing several multi-seasonal edibles, gardens are created that provide attractive features every month of the year. For example, cherry trees have flowers in the spring, fruit in the summer, and fall color in the autumn. Rainbow chard makes the summer garden bright, while its red stems contrast beautifully against the white of winter snow. In these varieties, you also get the beauty feature, along with the food.

Evergreen plants, such as rosemary, provide a permanent structure and soft, textured, needle-like leaves that give off a delightful aroma. Blueberry bushes bloom in the spring, produce fruits in the summer, and offer brilliant fall color. Artichokes provide a beautiful foliage of architectural silver leaves and make a dramatic show with their purple flowers. These are focal point plants that keep our minds anchored to garden designs through the seasonal transitions.

Using layering will ensure that the spectacle always changes by season, yet remains dynamic and appealing. Spring bulbs and summer nasturtiums can be used as underplantings for fruit trees. Blueberry bushes can be associated with autumn-flowering aster flowers. Edging runs of paths with alpine strawberries over a continuous period from June to frost conveys this principle in full. Then will the eye be satisfied at all times with something superior.

Incorporating textural elements when color is gone in winter enhances interest. Red-stemmed Swiss chard is brilliant against a white snowscape, while curled kale retains its sculptural forms. Berry canes, such as those of the red-twig dogwood, add crimson vertical accents. Edible features create beautiful winter compositions.

Utilize color gradients that blend harmoniously together. Early-flowering fruit trees, for example, should be placed near summer-producing raspberries, which fall-producing blueberries should also follow. My garden passes from the spring cherry blossoms, through the purple flowering basil of summer, to the brilliant foliage of blueberries in the autumn.

These exhibition orchards become living art that continues to work throughout the year. The rosemary hedge at a client's place also serves as a fragrant evergreen screen, providing a pleasant scent throughout the year. Such designs illustrate that food gardens, in terms of permanent beauty, can outrank ornamental planting.

Read the full article: 10 Essential Edible Landscape Design Tips