controlled chaos

I often have trou­ble mix­ing orna­men­tals and veg­eta­bles together in a gar­den bed that’s sup­posed to be “for com­pany,” a bed that’s meant to be attrac­tive as well as con­tain­ing tasty-looking plants that you’d like to take to the din­ner table.

red-and-blue-and-purple-1

red-and-blue-and-purple-2

Some parts of the gar­den where I’ve snuck veg­gies in with the other plants look a lit­tle chaotic, but here’s a patch that I really like the looks of. Ear­lier I showed part of this cor­ner that the bed­room win­dow over­looks. But new things are start­ing to bloom, and the col­ors are start­ing to really click for me.

When I was putting this bed together, I set myself the main rule of “noth­ing yel­low.” In decid­ing what veg­gies to place there, I just stuck to that orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple. (Okay, can you tell that I work in libraries and orga­nize infor­ma­tion dur­ing the week?)

This bed fea­tures sev­eral edi­bles: red-stemmed chard, orange-stemmed chard, Red Win­ter red Russ­ian kale, red beets, plus cat­mint for tea (and for the cat). The orna­men­tals include scar­let geum, pur­ple heliotrope, vio­let blue-eyed grass, the salmon-colored bulb Home­ria col­lina, two blue sages (Salvia sagit­tata and Salvia cacali­ae­fo­lia) plus a few other things not in bloom.

For sure, there’s a lot of red and blue and pur­ple going on here. But sev­eral vari­a­tions on green in the back­ground green do won­ders to pull together what might oth­er­wise be chaos.

I’m going to hate cut­ting any of these veg­gies for dinner…

April 04 2009 06:13 am | Categories: my garden | Tags: • • • • • • • •

9 Responses to “controlled chaos”

  1. Charles on 04 Apr 2009 at 7:47 am #

    I’ve seen this Vic­tory Gar­dens but I think it’s won­der­ful to see it. Not only that but the right mix of veg­gies with flow­ers is quite beautiful.

  2. Laura on 04 Apr 2009 at 8:13 am #

    Looks good! I’ve been think­ing of mix­ing some veg­eta­bles into my peren­nial gar­den for the last cou­ple of years– maybe this will be the year!

  3. tina on 04 Apr 2009 at 9:32 am #

    Yes, it looks very good-not chaotic, just nicely snug­gled. Maybe you can fill in where the veg­gies come out with some other veggies-not yel­low of course. And no, I did not know you worked in a library but I can see where the orga­ni­za­tion would come from now that I know. Have a great week­end James.

  4. Helen/patientgardener on 04 Apr 2009 at 10:57 am #

    I havw tried to mix veg and flow­ers before but it has never really worked so I found your post very interesting.

  5. Gayle Madwin on 04 Apr 2009 at 1:01 pm #

    It’s gor­geous! I haven’t tried grow­ing veg­eta­bles because I don’t like any of them, and nei­ther does my fiancee — and most of the herbs I planted for food pur­poses died. But if I some­day man­age to grow food suc­cess­fully, I would like to use it orna­men­tally. And I’d be happy for any of my beds to look as good as these, whether or not they con­tain edi­ble plants.

  6. kate on 04 Apr 2009 at 4:38 pm #

    I started mix­ing veg­gies with roses and flow­ers last year and quite loved the effect. Your com­bi­na­tions look great. I love red-stemmed chard ~ it is almost impos­si­ble to pick the veg­gies because they look so good.

  7. lostlandscape on 04 Apr 2009 at 6:58 pm #

    Charles, the vic­tory gar­den idea is a great one. If an orna­men­tal needs to be replaced, why not put an interesting-looking veg­gie in its place?

    Laura, go for it! Pick­ing peren­nial veggies–like kale–might be in keep­ing with your peren­nial gar­den theme.

    Tina, thanks very much. I try not to be too com­pul­sive in life, but an occa­sional bit of orga­niz­ing doesn’t seem to hurt things…

    Helen, I think some veg plants have such a short life com­pared to many other plants in the gar­den, so short that it’s hard to get them look­ing good and keep them that way for long. But I’d guess that there’s a gar­den sit­u­a­tion for just about any­thing. It’s just find­ing that right combination.

    Gayle, good luck get­ting the herbs to hang on. Some of the herbs are amaz­ingly gor­geous plants on their own.

    Kate, it’s fun to break down the wall between edi­bles and orna­men­tals isn’t it? Along the way I found that my veg­gies grow way bet­ter along­side the flow­ers than in their old, exhausted veg­gie bed.

  8. Karen - An Artist's Garden on 05 Apr 2009 at 2:18 pm #

    This is lovely James, a real pot­tager gar­den
    K

  9. ryan on 07 Apr 2009 at 9:51 am #

    Looks nice. We try to grow peren­ni­als in our veg­gie beds, too. Some peo­ple claim that the peren­nial roots keep the ben­e­fi­cial bac­te­ria lev­els higher.

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