Obviously, everyone wants to have beautiful landscaping to enhance their home and land. However, what’s really creative is to create a stylish setting that you can also… eat!
Here’s a selection of plants, herbs and shrubs that produce blossoms, leaves or edible fruits and that allow you to create an absolutely gorgeous edible landscaping. Enjoy your discovery!
Pretty and tasty: edible flowering plants
In this category, you will find plants whose flowers can be picked to enrich and add freshness to your menus.
Peach-Leaved Bellflower
It’s hard to believe that these pretty star-shaped flowers in shades of blue and white are edible! That’s the case with all this perennial variety: its leaves and roots can be eaten too. Easy to integrate into your landscaping, the peach blossom bellflower is easy to grow and blooms abundantly.
Scotch marigold
With its refreshing, peppery flavour, Calendula can be eaten in salads, colour your dishes or drink as an herbal tea. Its beautiful orange flowers of good size will enhance your environment while contributing in repelling undesirable insects that roam around your property.
Coneflowers
This resistant plant has well-known medicinal virtues, especially to help defend the immune system. Its large purple-pink flowers blend well with any landscape and grow easily in any location where Echinacea is planted!
Edible leafy plants for your landscaping
Here are some examples of plants whose leaves you can nibble on.
Radicchio
Also known as radicchio, this perennial vegetable has a beautiful purple-red colour with whitish streaks. Its crisp leaves are a nice addition to your salads and meals, as they give them a slightly tart taste.
Bugleherb
This plant produces absolutely beautiful blue spikes of flowers, but beware: it is a very invasive perennial! Its bitter leaves can be eaten raw, and are especially popular when young.
Chamomile
Its flowers look like small daisies, but its leaves are very fragrant in salads and herbal teas! What’s more, feverfew grows quickly and blooms easily every year, making your flowerbeds more attractive.
Scarlet Beebalm
In addition to its beautiful red flowers shaped like fireworks, the scarlet beebalm has leaves with a mint-like flavour. For this reason, it’s to be preferred in cold drinks and jams. If you wish to eat its leaves, it’s best to pick them before the plant blooms.
Hylotelephium spectabile
Not all stonecrops are edible, but this one is! It is a very sturdy, low-growing plant that grows quickly, no matter the soil. It has large red and white flowers and its crisp leaves are a good source of vitamin C.
Perennial herbs, a timeless classic
Oh, sweet herbs! Aromatic to the core, they make your edible landscaping even better.
Thymus citriodorus
As its name suggests, this type of thyme has green, white and yellow foliage with a classic, but slight, scent of lemon. Use without moderation to flavour salad dressings, soups, salads and more!
Purple Sage
This variety of sage has beautiful, downy purple leaves that become silvery over time. Like traditional sage, it has medicinal properties and can be used to enhance and flavour many dishes.
Italian strawflower
Also known as the curry plant, this herb with golden flowers has a silvery foliage that gives off, you guessed it, curry aromas. The leaves can be simmered in a dish during cooking to infuse the flavour, but be sure to remove the leaves before serving!
Lemon balm
Lemon balm is known for its beautiful bright green foliage, which exhales a lemony scent. You can use its leaves in infused or fresh drinks as well as in sauces, dressings and other prepared dishes. A versatile herb!
A nice visual effect with the fruit bushes
In addition to being pretty and producing tasty berries, shrubs in this category add volume and ambiance to your landscaping.
Goji
Originally from China, this shrub produces beautiful red-orange oval berries. They are known for their medicinal virtues, and also for their sweet taste! Goji berries are tasty when eaten dried.
Northern highbush blueberry
Rediscover the taste of wild blueberries thanks to this shrub with abundant fruit production. Its dark blue berries are as pleasant to look at as they are to taste. And you can bet you’ll be having a blast picking them in mid-summer!
Northern redcurrant
This teeming shrub produces large clumps of very light red fruit, called gadelles. Very versatile, these berries can be tasted in jellies, jams and various drinks, or fresh, as a dessert.
American black elderberry
This large, adaptable shrub produces long clusters of fragrant white flowers and black berries. Elderberry berries grow even when the shrub is in the shade, and are especially popular when made into jelly or syrup.
Sea-Buckthorn
Sea-buckthorn is becoming increasingly popular, but did you know that it has only been growing in Quebec since the 2000s? It is suited to our climate, but its fruit is not easy to pick because its branches are rather thorny. Those who manage to reach the berries know that they have a tangy taste, in addition to being rich in antioxidants and vitamin C.
This list, of course, is not exhaustive, so you’ll understand that it’s possible (and even easy!) to have edible landscaping in your home without sacrificing the beauty of your environment. Want some advice on how to carry out your landscaping project? Download our guide!
