Ideas

Lovely ideas are free to learn from and propagate.  Lovely ideas are the seeds of our edible landscapes.

A School garden in Duncan.  Wow look at that purple thyme!

Other plants include lemon Balm, Mints, lavender, Sage and in the back a Globe Artichoke.

A "sign" of things to come...  For a list of edibles see LANdpLAN.

The chickens are great to look at. If you are at all interested in raising chickens and you want to listen to some propaganda check out Bucky Buckaws Backyard Chicken Broad Cast.  buckybuckaw.org  These chickens are under the Arbutus Unido (a.k.a. the strawberry tree) which is feeding me yummy red berries from later October to December.  The sign reads "LETS PROVIDE OURSELVES WITH LOCAL, ORGANIC FOOD AND BRING BIODIVERSITY INTO OUR CITY BY TURNING OUR YARDS INTO BEAUTIFUL PERMACULTURE GARDENS"

Street lined with 100 year old Chestnuts.  (Not Horsechestnuts!)

Look at the size of these Chestnut trees on Point Street from the early 1900's.  Imagine the amount of food they could produce if 

they were watered and fertilized.

More Chestnuts close by on Marborough Street.

Living Willow Fence and Fig Trees.

I really like this photo because it shows the living willow fence (left) that Brent made at Linnaea farm on Cortes Island and some gorgeous fig trees on the right with dandy lion and borage ground covers.  Where people walk, plants can't grow.  This is why there are no weeds growing in the path.

Shade loving late-winter / early-spring greens.

What edible plant can grow on the North (shady side) of a house and a stand of evergreen conifers that is bright green and is a delight to make into salads?  Miners lettuce and chick weed!  Yes, that's right, I said weed.  Get it?  It's suited to this climate so it grows well here.  It tastes like lettuce except that it never goes bitter like regular lettuces.

Miners Lettuce

Miners lettuce makes a self sewing, native edible ground cover that will fill your salad bowl with year 'round.  Miners lettuce is high in vitamin C, beta carotene and protein.

More Miners Lettuce!

More Miners Lettuce as a ground cover with some Oregon Grape (right bottom).

Winter Interest:  Around here, sometimes we don't get any snow at all so for winter interest put plants in the landscape that have leaves and/or flowers in the winter.
Winter Food:  Most of the farmers markets and CSA box programs end in the winter so local food can be harder to buy however the temperature makes it like a big cooler out there and while plants don't grow much they will last all winter.
You will see that the colour pallet for Edible Landscaping is more limited than the one for conventional ornamental landscaping however as breeders get more into it this will change.
Here are some plant ideas to get us started...

Sage, Rosemary and Globe Artichoke

At the end of October Rosemary and Artichoke still look alright.

Kale forest

Here's a dogs eye view of a kale stand with and under story of mustards and parsley.  It's February 28th 2012 and this garden hasn't been weeded since September so there is a little grass and other stuff mixed in.

Overwintering

Native edibles.

Cammas (the purple flowers) and acorns are great foods to get us through the winter.  You can eat acorns as long as you prepare them by leeching out the tannins with 2 to 5 daily soakings of fresh water. 

Trellises for Kiwi

Kiwis have been attractively trellised here.  For pollination there must be a male and a female.

The City did a good thing at Fishermans wharf in Victoria.

This Chillean Guava is part of a herb garden at fishermans Wharf.  It's evergreen and has nice red berries that were nice to nibble on.

More, tasty, evergreens.

A large part of the harvest from one plant makes this one of my favorite evergreens.  Mahonia x media makes berries that I like to call "pop tarts" because they pop in your mouth and have a sweet/tart flavour, great for hot summer days.

Growing plants with the sole purpose of producing food with little maintenance does not always look good and in some cases can damage the soil.

Growing plants with the sole intention that they look good and are low maintenance does not often produce food and often damages the soil.

Growing plants with the purpose of improving soil, looking nice, producing food and being low maintenance is where I am putting my time and energy.

I hope that this blog will help us create edible landscapes.  I understand that sitting in front of this machine will not.  The machine can only help in communicating ideas with media that can be accessed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.