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Pretty and tasty
ck_gardener
Posts: 25
in Fruit & veg
In my new small garden I tried this year to combine flowers and veg - sweat peas with the runner beans etc.
I have never done this before. One problem is I am also getting used to the plot and improving the soil, but it was not too successful.
Please does anyone have advice on pretty vegetables that combine well with flowers and that are (ideally) easy to grow?
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Posts
nasturtium is pretty, mixed well with the border and easy to grow. It is not classified as vegetable but you could eat its leaves, flowers and seeds.
purple pod peas are very pretty, try again next year.
I grew courgettes for the first time this year and was pleasantly surprised by how large and pretty the flowers were. I found them very easy to grow and I'm no veg expert, just a beginner
Beetroot - the leaves are beautiful.
When I lived in the inner city with only a front garden, I grew broad beans amongst the flowers - passers by stopped and asked what the beautiful black and white flowers were.
Chives - the ordinary and Chinese chives - both have lovely allium-type flowers ('cos they are alliums
)
Courgettes look good if you have the space - get the bush not the trailing type - and then you have fantastic structural large-leaved plants with beautiful golden flowers.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Courgette flowers are good for eating
Chard - either "Bright Lights" or "Rhubarb" mixes very happily with flowers and looks stunning.
Borlotti beans, either dwarf bush type or tall ones up a wigwam. Pale pink bean flowers, very pretty bean pods.
Jerusalem artichokes are very tall with small bright yellow sunflowers that come late in the year. They spread though, if you don't dig up a fair proportion each year to eat. Tough as old boots.
Borage and calendula flowers are edible.
Get a root of 'Bocking 14' comfrey for a damp corner. Only that variety (it's sterile - other comfreys seed everywhere), fresh green leaves, pink flowers the bees love and it makes really good plant feed and/or mulch once it's established.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I grow crimson flowered broad beans and sometimes put spare ones in the flower boarder.
I grow redcurrant bushes in with the flowers, the currents look great with the lavender,roses,cosmos and Japanese Anemones.
Hi Ckgardener
You could try many of the above mentioned ideas as they would all compliment each other and the colours along with the contrast with veg and flowers really does stand out.
A few pictures from my allotment however small gardens also can be transformed using both its about using the space, that is area of ground against height and as DFA mentions if you get it right it will turn heads in a positive way.
Good luck and once you have decided please share with the members along with some photographs
Happy gardening
You could try a Yacon. The flowers aren't much but the leaf shape makes the whole plant quite ornamental. Most vegetable plants don't like to be too crowded by neighbours though as the yield is reduced.
Runner Beans were previously grown just as an ornamental, so no reason not to grow a wigwam or two mong the flowers.
To be perfectly honest I think this might result in over-crowding that inevitably leads to blight. The more flowers you put in the less vegetables you're likely to grow successfully. It might be best to think upwards in terms of flowers (climbers like sweet pea or clematis).