Creative ways with produce
By Graham Rice
One of the striking features of this year’s show is that there are food plants all over the showground – not just around the Growing Tastes Marquee. Many of the Show Gardens, Small Gardens and other gardens feature food plants used as ornamentals.
Fantastic foliage
On the Twelfth Night Garden, courgette ‘Kestrel’ has been used as a bold foliage plant, on a corner, its large jagged leaves prettily patterned in silver and with fruit ready to pick; a classic ornamental food plant that looks good and tastes good.
In front is one of the most widely used ornamental veg plants, the red oak-leaved lettuce ‘Red Salad Bowl’. If you grow enough plants – and why wouldn’t you – you can pick just a leaf or two from each plant for the salad bowl and the display still looks good in the garden. The red lettuce is complemented by the short but sturdy foliage perennial Heuchera ‘Licorice’, one of the recent influx of fine new foliage heucheras.
Farther along the front border the prettily patterned Heuchera ‘Ginger Spice’ with its dark veined, silvery leaves sits in front of an ornamental beetroot ‘Bull’s Blood’ with reddish purple leaves and long deep red roots.
A tapestry of herb and veg
Around the corner on the Food 4 Thought Garden I came across an unusual way of growing vegetables and herbs. Planted vertically on the back wall, using a vertical growing system from Aldingbourne Nurseries, were bush tomatoes, dwarf bell peppers, chilli peppers, mint, thyme, rosemary and curly parsley.
Water is added at the top, soaks into the soil pockets as it filters down and any surplus drains away at the base. The result is a verdant tapestry of green shapes, scents and texture which will soon be sparked with fruits.
In the front, I spotted a new way of growing stepover apples. Often seen edging paths, here these low horizontal cordons of red-fruited ‘Scrumptious’ and ‘Falstaff’ apples, were grown across the bed and interplanted with the yellow daisies of Anthemis tinctoria ‘E. C. Buxton’ and the flat red heads of Achillea ‘Feuerland’.