This is the year to start an edible garden! With fuel and food prices on the rise, it’s more important than ever to make your garden work for you. Considering that bread prices have increased 13% and the cost of peanut butter has risen 9 percent over the past year, it’s time to save money where you can and while you can’t grow white bread or peanut butter, you can relieve some pressure on your wallet by growing your own fruits and vegetables.

An edible landscape or a vegetable garden will help you to save gas, save on groceries, provide fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs to your family and can allow for a lovely landscape at the same time. 

Edible plants, like ornamental plants come in all shapes, sizes and colors and like all ornamental plants some grow better in certain conditions than others, however hardy varieties can flourish in virtually any environment.
You can grow a conventional garden, go entirely edible or you can incorporate some edible varieties into your existing yard or garden.

There's an assortment of fruit trees that are considered hardy and will thrive in small, medium or large backyards. Dwarf trees for smaller back yards, semi-dwarf trees for a medium sized area and standard for larger areas. Depending on the region you live in, you can have fresh, pesticide free peaches, plums, apples, nectarines, etc.

Shrubs, are fairly hardy and attractive too. For instance, blueberry bushes mix nicely among other flowering shrubs with their green leaves, and bell shaped flowers and later the berries themselves. You can even plant varieties off blueberry bushes that are evergreen so they’ll look nice all year long. The sizable red rose hips that grow on the “Rugosa”, a type of shrub rose, provide 60 times the vitamin C of an orange, and look wonderful while doing so.

Need some ground cover or a barrier to an existing garden? Herbs such as oregano and thyme make a nice ground cover, as they are low profile. Lettuce, chives and parsley also make a nice border. Taller herbs can be planted among flowering plants or in the back of beds.

Ornamental Kale and Romanesco grow in all zones and can be used planted in amongst late summer plants to help provide fall and winter color. Ornamental kale, the most robust member of the cabbage family,  tastes nearly as good as garden kale. It grows in an assortment of colors from light green to dark green and violet green to violet –brown.  Romanesco is a broccoli-like plant that pairs well with Ornamental Kale.  Romanesco is light green in color and is rich in fiber, vitamin C and carotenoids (an antioxidant).