Edible Landscaping

What is Edible Landscaping?

Guava, ginger, cucumber and garlic. Orange, rhubarb, persimmon and lemon. What if I told you all manner of tropical flavours can be grown year after year from one bed in the garden?
Well they can...
Edible Landscaping combines the Permaculture principle of 'Edible Forest Gardening' with conventional garden design theory, the result? Beautiful ornamental gardens with an edible twist!
Edible landscaping is the best of both, an ornamental garden with every plant producing something delicious to eat. Edible Landscaping is also a great way to grow and harvest exotic flavours straight from the garden, often fruits and flavours not available anywhere else and by using perennials and self seeding annuals, harvests will return year after year after year - without the need to re-sow or work the soil!
Edible Landscaping is the only way to create a beautiful, Willy Wonka inspired flavour factory in your garden... What's not to like?

No-Dig for Victory Garden: Brassica oleracea - wild cabbage, a perennial kale providing a year round supply of cabbage leaves. Growing well with Lavendula angustifolia 'Hidcote', Rhubarb, Lemon verbena, wild strawberries and a plum!

Red and white alpine strawberries, used as ground-cover in a woodland themed Edible Landscape.

We provide design and consultancy in:

Edible Forest Gardens
Herb Gardens
Edible Landscaping
Permaculture Design
Food Forest Design

Strawberry 'Yellow Wonder' a white alpine strawberry. Alpine strawberries make effective groundcover in Edible Forest Gardens as the fruit is lifted above the ground. Protecting them from slugs!

No-Dig Edible Forest Garden in Newquay. The coarse texture of Sea kale (Crambe maritima) contrasts well with the fine texture of fennel and curry plant.

Brassica oleracea - wild cabbage growing well with Pum 'Pink Candy,' Lavandula angustifolia hidcote and Aloysia citrodora the lemon verbena. All contrasting well with a scorched wood bee-post.

Pineapple Guava, Acca sellowiana 'Mammoth' flower. The pineapple guava produces edible marshmallow flavoured flowers followed by edible egg-sized fruits. All on hardy ornamental evergreen shrubs.

Edible Landscaping:

Low maintenance
Good for wildlife
Stores carbon
Produces organic food

Low-maintenance | Edible Ecosystems
An Edible Landscape uses the same principles as a Food Forest or Edible Forest Garden. Designed to:

Replicate a forest ecosystem.
Utilise beneficial relationships between plants.
Optimise vertical growing space.
Thrive with biodiversity
and...produce an abundance of sustainably produced, organic food.

What makes Edible Landscaping unique is that this concept is scaled down appropriately for a domestic or public space setting. Then, combined with conventional, ornamental garden design theory. Using his combination of methods results in garden-sized Food Forest ecosystems, that to the untrained eye look just like any ornamental garden, the twist being that everything you see is edible. Like a Food Forest, an Edible landscape is also low maintenance once established.

Diagram explaining the different layers and roles for plants in a Food Forest or Edible Landscape. The examples above are suitable for a frost free garden. Note: 'Root layer' is not included to prevent soil disruption

Tropical themed Edible Landscape. Edible dahlias help to create an exotic ambiance.

Ficus 'Brunswick' figs ripening well in the Edible Forest Garden in Newquay.

Woodland themed Edible Landscape. Featuring plants such as; Welsh onion, Kale 'Pentland Brig' and Chilean Guava.

Allium nutans - Beautiful, edible allium that bees love! Allium nutans can be used like chives!

Why Edible Landscapes?

According to the National Trust (2019), UK wildlife is in massive decline, with several species facing extinction. Conventional agriculture, climate change, loss of habitat and pollution are all key contributors to the devastating loss of our native ecosystems that humans rely on (National Trust, 2019).

At a time when we are looking at more ways to grow food more sustainably, we at Gardens of Eden believe that Edible Landscaping has a role to play. Growing food in a Food Forest or Edible Landscape ecosystem has a variety of benefits, such as:

Ecological: an Edible Landscape is a multidimensional, food producing ecosystem and many perennial edibles useful to us and used in Edible Landscaping also provide benefits to pollinators and other wildlife
Low maintenance: Once established an Edible Landscape requires very little maintenance as watering, digging and sowing won't be necessary. Most of the Edible Landscapes created by Gardens of Eden only require a couple of hours weeding a month.
Store carbon: Because an Edible Landscape is created using perennial crops, the garden will not be tilled again. Meaning the plants will be able to do their job and store carbon into the soil without it being dug up and released again.
Reduce food miles/packaging: Food grown from an Edible Landscape in your garden wont travel far before you eat it and un-biodegradable packaging wont be necessary.
Versatile: An Edible Landscape can be designed for a variety of settings and can come in a range of sizes and themes. Their versatility means that an Edible Landscape can produce food in most domestic gardens as well as public spaces, community plots, verges, you name it.
Resilient: The diversity of species in a Food Forest or Edible Landscape helps to make these food systems more resilient to pests, diseases and a-biotic factors such as climate change.
Organic: The multidimensional, multi-species nature of an Edible Landscape means that chemical feeds and herbicides wont be necessary. Gardens of Eden doesn't use chemicals on any of our gardens, including our Edible Landscapes.
Abundance in our landscape: Edible Landscapes in gardens and greenspaces could help to provide communities with access to free fruit and vegetables, which could help to improve food security and provide piece of mind in times of uncertainty.

Edible Landscapes can create beautiful, edible ecosystems in our gardens resilient to forces of climate change and the uncertainty of the economy. Moving towards a sustainable, organic, more self sufficient way of producing delicious food.

National Trust (2019) 'The State of Nature Report 2019'. National Trust

Edible Forest Garden in Newquay: The garden provides sea kale, plums, strawberries Chilean guavas, figs and more! and still looks ornamental.

L-Shaped Edible Landscape in the No-Dig for Victory Garden. Perennial kales, onions fruit trees and shrubs as well as rhubarb and strawberries provide food year round!

Below: Zac's talk on Edible Landscaping at the Cornwall Garden Society Spring Flower Show 2019 and his talk on: Localised Agriculture at the Eden Project Symposium on food security.

Tropical themed Edible Landscape: This bed contains Zingiber mioga a hardy ginger as well as various perennial onions and kales.

Dig for Victory for the 21st century:

Empowering Communities...

Edible Landscaping in domestic gardens, greenspaces and community plots may have wider potential... With access to Edible Landscaping and Food Forests, communities could potentially have access to a free food source and therefore control over a portion of their food supply.

If Edible Landscaping can provide just 5% of a communities food supply this could prove invaluable in times of emergency. The recent pandemic has exposed the fragility of our current food system, it only takes a bit of panic from the public to cause food shortages. Edible Landscapes in our gardens and greenspaces could alleviate our dependency on global supply chains which could help to provide more security in times of uncertainty.

Tropical themed Edible Landscape. Featuring plants such as; Chinese rhubarb Rheum palmatum, dwarf mulberry, Persimmon and Ficus 'Sultane'

Fruits of Ugni molinae - The Chilean Guava. Evergreen shrubs which produce delicious blueberry sized, guava flavoured fruits.

Is food from Edible Landscapes nutritious?

Probably... Donald R. Davis, (2013) compared the nutritional content of a variety of modern garden crop cultivars with the nutrient content of older cultivars. He found reliable declines in most of the nutrients measured from the modern crops when compared to the older cultivars (Davis, 2013).

What does this mean? Davis, (2013) argued that modern cultivars have been selectively bred for higher yields and fast growth but that the crops haven't necessarily adapted to uptake nutrients at this accelerated rate (Davis, 2013).

Davis (2013) also hypothesised that commercial growers would be likely to select plants for yield and shelf life and wouldn't necessarily be choosing plants for their nutritional content as they themselves were under pressure to make a living.

What's great about an Edible Landscape is that we can select the most nutritious and flavourful cultivars possible. Many of the perennial kales and onions for example are heirloom varieties, still very close genetically to their wild ancestor. We are choosing plants for their flavour and nutritional content and not for shelf life.

In addition, food grown in an Edible Landscape is organic and can be harvested and eaten straight away! Fruit and vegetables begin to degrade as soon as they are picked. So the sooner it's eaten after its picked the best chance we have of eating a more nutritious crop.

Davis, D. (2013) 'Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999' Journal of the American College of Nutrition

Dahlia 'Luwig Helfert' - Dahlia flowers and tubers are edible. The Aztecs cultivated dahlias for their starchy tubers and used them like a potato.

Is Edible Landscaping the same as Edible Forest Gardening?

Sort of: Edible Landscaping uses the principles of; 'Edible Forest Gardening' and scales them down appropriately for a domestic or public space setting.

This is then combined with conventional garden design theory, creating a mini Food Forest without having to sacrifice floral colour or epic form.
Combining the edible and ornamental garden into one.