Edible Landscaping

View of a front yard with edible landscaping

Last summer my husband and I were taking a stroll along the beach and on our way home we passed by this amazing front yard that incorporated a variety of garden fruits and vegetables into the landscaping (cucumbers, strawberries, chard, etc.) (see picture).  And the best part about this edible  landscaping (other than the edible part) was that it was so subtle, elegant, and surprisingly non-vegetable garden looking.  It was so subtle in fact that we almost strolled right on past without noticing.  I had read about edible landscaping before but had never seen it executed with such style.  We were smitten and decided that we'd like to incorporate edible landscaping in a similar manner in our yard.  Enter blueberries...

Cucumber, tomatoes, strawberries, and lavender

A month earlier we had visited a local blueberry farm to do some blueberry picking and fell in love with blueberry bushes.  Given our son's penchant for blueberries and the fact that we had a nice little space open in our back yard we decided that blueberries would be our first experiment in the edible landscaping arena.  Not that we don't have other edible landscaping (we have figs, lemons, and guavas in our back yard), but they came with the house and there is plenty of space for more.  After a few months of prepping the soil with coffee grounds generously donated by my coworkers (blueberries need acidic soil) we decided it was time to plant.  So yesterday we headed off to a local nursery and picked up Sunshine and Misty.  As we've learned, you need to have at least two bushes of different varieties.  Sunshine and Misty are varieties that have relatively small bushes (so they'll work in our small space) and they bear fruit at different times of the season (so we can maximize our berry picking time).


We'll see how our first experiment into edible landscaping goes.  If it goes well we'll be replacing four large bushes in our front yard with several varieties of blueberry bushes.  And we already have big plans for some strawberry plants in the front yard once spring rolls around.