You want to grow some food, but you don’t want your
yard to look like a farm. Or maybe your Home Owner’s Association has rules on
that and will freak if they can tell you planted some produce producing plants.
Or maybe you have a difficult neighbor who has a tendency to report everything
you do to the city inspectors. If you are looking for a way to mix in the
edible plants with flowering things The Beautiful Edible Garden: Design a
Stylish Outdoor Space Using Vegetables, Fruits and Herbs might be the
book you.
Recently released in paperback by Ten Speed Press,
the paperback book is broken into six chapters detailed with text and numerous
photographs. Designed to take you through design, planting, harvesting, and
maintaining your garden there is also information geared toward us apartment
dwellers with patios and balcony’s. Colorful and edible is the idea here along
with using whatever space you have to maximum effect.
Chapter One “Principles for Successful Edible Garden
Design” opens the colorful 200 page book after a very brief introduction. The
main theme here is to come up with something that has balance and complements
the architecture of the home. By choosing the right height and color plant and
considering the ideas of symmetry and asymmetry, among other design ideas, you
can achieve something beautiful. The authors take readers visually and by text
through these ideas as swell as show how to make the garden work year around
with multiple harvests of the same produce. Various styles of landscaping among
other topics are covered here.
Chapter Two “Creating Your Beautiful Edible Garden”
takes the reader through the author’s five step process to create exactly what
the chapter title suggests regardless of the space. They also tell you what to
consider regarding your soil, light, water, and other issues.
Starting on page 67 you can start applying what you
have learned in “Chapter Three: The
Beautiful Edible Front Yard.” This is
what the neighbors will see the most and there are ways to grow food without the
issues noted above. Your only issue may be being sure to plant enough to share
when harvest time comes around. Design elements are also a major focus of this
chapter as is the problem of unwanted pets in the yard. Front yards can also be
a good focal point for containers and they are discussed here.
Once you have done the deal in the front yard you
move on to “Chapter Four: The Beautiful Edible Backyard.” Working off the idea that the vegetable
aspect of gardening should be a focal point of the overall landscape, the
authors explain in detail how to make things beautiful, productive, and
functional. Along the way they go through various options such as if you want
to have a large family dining area separate away from the main house, on a small patio, or something else. What you can plant intermixed along a walkway
and what really needs its own beds (garlic and potatoes) among other topics are
covered.
Chapter Five comes into play where your space is
limited. “Beautiful Window Boxes, Side Yards, and Other Small Spaces” begins on
page 149 and opens with advice on container gardens. Once you gave the right
container, you need the right edible plant for it. The authors make numerous
detailed suggestions. Window boxes, side yards, and other small spaces are also
extensively covered very well in this chapter.
“Chapter Six:
Planting and Maintaining Your Beautiful Edible Garden” is all about just
that. Improving your soil, getting a
compost bin going (assuming you can have one), water issues, etc., are just a
few of the issues covered here before more information on the various types of
seeds and plants. Along with a list of toxic plants that you may wish to avoid
if you have small children that put anything and everything in their mouths,
there are suggestions regarding tools, planting techniques, mulch, pests,
beneficial bugs, and more.
This isn’t just a how to grow book. Interspersed throughout the book are
instructions with pictures on how to assemble wreaths of all types, flower
arrangements, and other colorful elements for your home. That carries over into
the five page resource list that stars on page 200. In addition to blog and book suggestions,
there are recommendations for composting supplies and materials, nurseries,
organic fertilizers, tools and furniture, and more.
The book concludes with a one page acknowledgement
page and a one page author/contributor page and a four page index.
The
Beautiful Edible Garden: Design a Stylish Outdoor Space Using Vegetables,
Fruits and Herbs is one of those colorful gardening
books that not only will inspire you to try to duplicate the results, it will
show you how to do so in simple step by step detail. Colorful and informative,
this paperback works on every level. All you have to do is get out there and
get dirty.
The
Beautiful Edible Garden: Design a Stylish Outdoor Space Using Vegetables,
Fruits and Herbs
Leslie
Bennett and Stefani Bittner
Flower
Arrangements by Studio Choo
Photographs
by David Fenton
Ten
Speed Press (Crown Publishing)
February
2013
ISBN#
978-1-60774-233-3
Paperback
(also available as e-book)
220
Pages
$19.99
Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano Texas
Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2013
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