Limited yard space, but still want to grow your own healthy, pesticide-free produce?
You CAN—it’s all about getting creative by designing a compact, beautiful, and yep, edible, landscape.
Below are 7 ways to create an edible landscape by swapping out ornamental landscaping plants for fruits and vegetables.
Hanging Baskets
Forget the flowers and grow strawberries, bush cucumbers, or dwarf tomatoes in hanging baskets instead. These will all cascade prettily over the side of the basket. Herbs like creeping thyme, prostrate rosemary, and chives are all great choices.
Read more about growing fruits and vegetables in a hanging basket.
Hedges
Swap out regular hedges for brambles like raspberries and blackberries, or even blueberry bushes.
Learn more about how to grow and propagate blackberry plants in your backyard.
If you’re local to Nashville, join us at Stoney Creek Farm on Saturday, October 16 for our How to Grow Blackberries Class. You’ll also get two canes from our proven stock as part of your ticket!
Border Plants
Vining plants such as melons, cucumbers, winter squash, and pumpkins make excellent border plants along a walkway. Strawberries are another great border plant pick.
Trees
Leave the cherry blossoms and magnolias for your neighbor’s yard, and grow fruit trees instead, like fig, peach, pear, and nectarine trees. For small yards, choose semi-dwarf types that remain relatively compact.
(If growing fruit trees, don’t make the same mistakes we did.)
Trellis
Beautify a bland wall with upward-growing plants on a trellis. Melons, cucumbers, green peas, snow peas, pole beans, summer and winter squash, and tomatoes can all be trained to creep up a trellis.
A vertical pallet garden adds whimsy to any wall—and allows you to enjoy a garden with limited space. Herbs are great options to grow in your vertical pallet garden.
Window Boxes
Again, you can switch out ornamental flowers in your window boxes for something you can serve on your dinner table. Root crops like carrots, beets, turnips, and rutabaga are great window box options. Additionally, lettuce, radishes, and onions can be grown in window boxes.
Free Space
Let no space go to waste!
If you do have additional yard space, convert that to a garden—you can go the traditional in-ground gardening route, or you can create a raised bed garden.
If you only have pavement to work from, you can still grow a garden using the lasagna gardening method.
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YOU’RE INVITED
Annual Sustainable Farm Conference
Join us at Stoney Creek Farm in beautiful Franklin, TN for our Annual Sustainable Farm Conference on Saturday, October 2, 2021.
We’ll give you the guidance and tools to incorporate money-saving sustainable living practices into your life. Whether you’re looking to own a farm, start your own homestead, or simply live sustainably right where you’re at, this conference is for you.
There are only 10 spots left—don’t wait to grab your ticket!
