Edible Garden Designs

Plants and herbs have always been used to cure ailments—and we know that an apple a day keeps the doctor away! Edible garden designs can easily include many medicinal plants.

Today I’d like to tell you about a special edible garden—it’s the oldest garden in England and has been under continuous cultivation for around a millennium.

Westminster Abbey is not just for pomp and ceremony. Where's your favorite edible garden?

More than 1 million visitors explore the amazing Westminster Abbey each year. Few know that the Abbey’s College Garden was started as the Infirmary Garden more than 900 years ago and provided medicinal herbs for the monks. Some herbs, such as fennel and hyssop, are still grown in the garden. It also provided vegetables and fruit for the Abbey.

I must confess that this is a special place for me. In my late teens I worked briefly next to the garden at Westminster School in a task quite relevant to edible plants. I had a second job washing dishes in a cubby off the historic, stone-floored College Hall dining hall to fund my European travels.

Abbey, College, School?

Now if the Abbey, College and School terms are confusing, here’s a quick run down. The Abbey’s real name is the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster. It was established by Benedictine monks in the middle of the 10th century. The then monarch, King Edgar, gave them a huge swag of land covering most of what is now the West End of London.

In the Abbey’s grounds is the highly-rated Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster—known as Westminster School. Parts of School’s buildings date back to the 11th century, older than the current Abbey. The school has a fascinating and colorful history, well worth a read. The School was re-founded by the impressive and intelligent Elizabeth I–check out the bit about how she attended the Latin plays there which Queen Victoria later called “very Improper”!

An 18th century school dormitory building marks a boundary of the College Garden.  And College Hall, the 14th century Abbot’s state dining hall, is one of the oldest and finest examples of medieval refectory in existence, and is still used as a dining room.

But back to that garden!

In charge of the garden in those ancient times was the Infirmarer, one of the Abbey’s senior monks. He directed the planting and cultivation of the various herbs needed for medicinal purposes in the Infirmary. He cared for sick and elderly monks and ran a dispensary for local people.

The original garden was mainly an area for growing herbs, fruit and vegetables. It was also where convalescing monks could get some open air for relaxation and gentle exercise.

Knot daunted to replicate this in your edible garden designs?

These days, there’s a knot garden, with its spaces filled with white and blue lavender, where the original herbarium was planted. Lots of others herbs make up borders and are grown in pots. They include rosemary, St John’s Wort, angelica, licorice, winter savoury and lots of mints.

But don’t eat their herbs now!

Sadly, because of high lead levels in the soil, many of the herbs growing in the garden today can no longer be used for medicinal purposes. However, by helping with charity fund-raising, especially medical and associated causes, the Abbey and its garden continues the link with the Monastic Infirmarer’s garden to promote health and welfare for the people of London and beyond.

We’d love to hear about some of your favorite edible gardens. Just send a note via the comment box.

PS: Check out more about the Abbey too.

In Part 1 of How to Get Colour into an Edible Garden, we talked about the importance of colour—it can make you feel good. We outlined some of the elements you could come up with for a colour plan.

In this article, we go into more detail on the plants themselves.

We outlined 5 ways to get colour into any garden design:

Do you have an easy crab apply jelly recipe?

1. Flowers, annuals or perennials
2. Foliage
3. Bark
4. Fruit
5. Seeds & Nuts

And of course, hard landscaping—using a feature wall or sculpture, can also introduce colour.

Here are some of the edible plants in each of these categories—and they all blend with non-edibles, too!

1.         Flowers

Using flowers is the most obvious way to get colour into any garden.

Flowers may be annuals, such as marigolds and pansies, which can be enjoyed for their bright, happy colours and used in salads and for food presentation. They’re great in pots and baskets.

Perennial edible flowers can include things like lavender, where the flower is used in delicious nibbles such lavender biscuits/cookies. BTW, the Sunshine Lavender Farm is a great site for lavender recipes.

Shrubs and trees also produce colourful flowers. Think about the enjoyment of that first spring blossom—usually produced by a fruiting apricot, apple or cherry. How does that make you feel?

You can also purchase multi-grafted fruit trees producing up to 3 different blossoms on the one tree. And there’s a growing range of dwarf fruit trees that can work particularly well in smaller areas.

2.         Foliage

Foliage plays an important part in bringing colour into the garden, particularly seasonal colour—and we don’t just mean Autumn/Fall colours.

Foliage can be varying shades of green—lime green, grey green, yellow green, dark green. Think of the grey of olive trees or artichokes, and the rich dark green leaves of mandarins. But people often forget that foliage can also be silver, brown, red, burgundy, yellow, purple or variegated.

The most effective way to achieve foliage colour is to plant a mass of the one plant. So clumps of 5 or more planted close together will have an eye catching effect. Or an entire planting of the one variety to create a hedge.

Grey and silver foliage adds light to an area. Silver foliaged plants are also known to be extremely drought tolerant.

Foliage can also be seasonal. In temperate climates, the four seasons are prominent and autumn/Fall produces the most spectacular autumnal colour. Burnt oranges, dusty reds, velvety burgundies and brilliant yellows can be spotted sometimes kilometres away.

Imagine the warmth that a fruiting grapevine creates as it turns its green cooling summer leaves into warm rich and claret and shiraz colour leaves as they drape over the pergola that creates that outside room.

3.         Bark

Believe it or not, bark can be quite eye striking. Many barks are edible although they are not the sort of produce we just go and pick and eat. They’re often used in commercial production or for food for zoo animals, such as bamboo for pandas.

Think about the bright yellow and red stems of the beautiful bamboos found in the tropical climates.

Other colourful edible bark include:

• birch tree…do you make your own beer? Trunk sap is used in beer, vinegar and soft drinks. Birch stems are one of the whitest barks you will get.
• Red sugar cane…red stems used for sugar.

4.         Fruit

Fruit can bring a lot of colour into the garden.

A carpet of bright juicy red strawberries in the middle of summer is very refreshing.

The most spectacular sight I ever saw was a Malus ‘Gorgeous’, also known as the red crab apple tree. I was out walking and this glimpse of red colour took my eye. The tree had lost its autumn foliage and was exposing its bare dark coloured wood. Hanging off these branches were the striking red crab apples. They sort of reminded me of when you hang juicy plump red cherries behind your ears, as we all did as children. It made me want to run home and start making crab apple jelly!

Fruit can be colourful when cut open but we are concentrating on fruit which produces a colourful outer skin on ripening.

• A tree producing a colour fruit can be used as a specimen tree to create a focal point, e.g. bright red persimmon.
• A hedge of citrus—such as a mandarin or lime—can also be breathtaking when in fruit. Lemon tart always goes down well.

5.         Seeds and Nuts

Think about using a nut tree as a specimen tree. Or create a hedge or windbreak of almonds or walnuts.  You can be more formal or go for a more informal or pleached look.

Most plants produce a seed as part of the reproductive process. Colourful seeds are often inside the fruit like a pommegranite or passionfruit.

Nuts can provide colour too. It may not always be bright colour but can be soft and subdued, or shiny or dull. For example chesnuts are beautiful to look at when they bear their glossy rich husk which surrounds the nut. As they reach maturity they fall to the ground creating a ‘carpet’ underneath the tree. The mouth tingles as you scoop them up to roast over the open fire.

Bringing colour into your garden is a great way to use your creativity and achieve the WOW factor. It makes you feel good and can be enjoyed all year round.

Just remember: Think outside the square!