Looking across our vegetable garden on October 19th, I was amazed to see just how voluptuous it appeared.
Not least because we grow flowers, fruit, and vegetables together.
This is ingrained in my psyche for it was the way my family gardened before everyone became obsessed with rows.
Today we don’t need rows of this and that for everything ripens at once, too much food, too much waste.
Why not take a decorative approach when designing a vegetable area?
Here we are already thinking of using some of the more decorative vegetables in the flower garden proper.
Ian Roofe recently saw some kale, ‘Nero de Toscana’ used to great effect at Glasnevin Botanic Garden in Ireland.
Look at various kinds of kale, they are a very decorative family of vegetables as well as nutritious and you will never need a whole row, just three or four plants is enough for the average household.
If you like climbing vegetables, peas, beans, and the like, grow them decoratively up wigwams of canes or brushwood combining them with sweet peas and for later the indomitable morning glory or climbing nasturtiums.
If you grow some new potatoes and nothing beats the home-grown taste of freshly dug spuds, when they have been eaten, have some annual asters ready to take their place.
Grown from seed, they are easy and will bloom in late August.
Granny Gray grew aster ‘Ostrich Plume’ in pinks, mauves, and blues.
A few hardy chrysanthemums will not go amiss either, good for bunches for the house or for presents in late autumn, nothing cheers like a hand-picked bunch of fresh flowers from the garden.
Fruit bushes are also useful both as decorative subjects and desserts.
I have fond memories of sitting beneath a gooseberry called ‘Leveller’ and gorging on its large golden, sweet fruit.
If I was found out, I was assured that I would get tummy ache but, I never did.
Red and white currants, something of a delicacy and hard to find today, one bush of each is sufficient but, remember to net them to thwart attacks from any birds that like to steal their fruits.