Food Garden Ideas: Grow Food Without a Vegetable Plot

Most advice about growing food assumes you want an allotment, and the result is that a lot of people who would happily grow food never start. This is the other approach: edible plants used as plants, in the garden you already have, chosen because they look good and happen to be dinner. It is also how I get most of what I actually eat.

The short answer

Choose edibles that earn their place visually: ruby chard, cavolo nero, globe artichoke, bronze fennel, purple podded beans, herbs, and strawberries as edging. Train fruit flat against a fence, which needs 40 cm of depth and gives blossom, crop and structure. Put everything on the route you already walk, because herbs at the far end of the garden do not get picked. Keep rows of maincrop roots and brassicas in a dedicated bed if you have one.

The idea: edibles as plants, not as crops in rows#

A vegetable bed is a production system. Rows, spacing, succession, bare soil between plants. It works and it looks like what it is.

A border containing food is a different proposition. The plants are chosen for how they look as well as what they yield, they sit among ornamentals, and there is no bare soil.

Both are good. The second one is what fits into an ordinary garden without redesigning it, and it is much easier to start.

Key points

• Choose edibles for form, colour and texture first. If it also happens to be productive, that is the deal.
• Avoid anything that leaves a hole. Crops harvested all at once are poor border plants.
• Put it where you walk. Proximity to the back door is the single biggest predictor of whether food gets used.
• Mix rather than block. A pest hunting brassicas finds a row of forty faster than three among geraniums.
• Train fruit flat. Vertical surfaces are the most under-used growing space in most gardens.

The edibles that hold their own in a border#

Tested by whether I would plant them if they were inedible. Everything here passes.

Ruby or rainbow chard

Vivid stems, big glossy leaves, crops for eight months from one sowing and survives light frost. The best edible border plant there is.

Cavolo nero kale

Upright, architectural, near black leaves. Structure through winter, when a border most needs it.

Globe artichoke

Enormous silver foliage, and if you let one flower the bees are on it for weeks. Worth growing purely as a foliage plant.

Bronze fennel

A haze of dark feathery foliage, umbels the hoverflies love, and edible seed. Self seeds enthusiastically, which is either free plants or a nuisance.

Purple podded climbing beans

Up a wigwam or an obelisk in the middle of a border. Flowers, then purple pods, and it earns the height.

Herbs, all of them

Rosemary, sage, thyme, chives, oregano. Evergreen or nearly so, drought proof, scented when brushed, and the most expensive things in the shop.

Strawberries as edging

Spreads along a front edge, flowers, fruits, and the runners give you free plants every year.

Trained fruit, which is the best use of space in any garden#

If there is one idea here worth acting on, it is this.

A fence, a wall or a boundary is growing space you are not using. An apple or pear trained flat as a cordon, espalier or fan occupies about 40 cm of depth, gives you blossom in spring, fruit in autumn and a structure that looks deliberate all year.

Buy on a dwarfing rootstock and say what you want it for; a good nursery will steer you. Trained forms are pruned in summer rather than winter, which is the opposite of a free standing tree and the thing people get wrong.

Soft fruit does the same job on a smaller scale. Redcurrants and gooseberries train flat against a wall beautifully, and a blackcurrant is a perfectly reasonable shrub in a mixed border.

Put it where you walk#

This is not a horticultural point and it matters more than any of them.

Herbs at the bottom of the garden do not get picked, because on a wet Tuesday in October you will not go out there for two sprigs of thyme. Herbs beside the back door get used almost daily.

So the layout rule is simple: the more often you pick something, the closer it goes to the door. Herbs and salad nearest. Chard, beans and courgettes next. Anything harvested once, potatoes, squash, onions, can be as far away as you like.

What to keep out of the border#

Being honest about the limits keeps this from becoming a gimmick.

Maincrop potatoes. They occupy ground for months and then leave a large hole and disturbed soil.

Onions and garlic. Slow, unremarkable to look at, and they need to be lifted and dried.

Rows of brassicas. Cabbage and sprouts want netting against butterflies, and netting over a mixed border looks terrible.

Anything you want in quantity. Twenty leeks is a row, not a border planting, and pretending otherwise makes for a bad border and a poor crop.

If you have a dedicated bed, that is what it is for. If you do not, buy those four things and grow the rest.

A plan for one existing border#

Nothing here requires digging anything up. This is what I would add to a border three metres by one and a half.

Back layer

One globe artichoke for silver foliage, and an obelisk of purple podded beans for summer height.

Middle

A group of three ruby chard, three cavolo nero, and bronze fennel for the haze between them.

Front edge

Strawberries running along it, with thyme and chives filling the gaps at the corners.

The fence behind

One cordon apple or a fan trained redcurrant. This is the piece that changes the border most.

Gaps, in April

Salad and radish sown into any bare patch. They are gone before anything else needs the room.

That is perhaps forty dollars of plants and a packet of seed, and it will produce ingredients from May to the following spring without looking like an allotment.

The honest yield question#

Worth stating plainly, because edible landscaping writing tends to imply more than it delivers.

A border planted like this changes meals. It gives you the herb, the handful of leaves, the beans, the courgettes, the fruit. That is genuinely valuable and it is also where the money is, because those are the expensive things to buy.

What it will not do is replace a shop. Calories come from potatoes, grains and roots grown in quantity, and quantity needs dedicated ground and a plan. Anyone suggesting a mixed border will feed a household is not counting.

I find that framing makes the whole thing more satisfying rather than less. The aim is not self sufficiency. It is that dinner has something in it that was outside twenty minutes ago.

Where this needs adjusting#

In shade, drop the fruiting crops entirely and lean on leaves: chard, kale, salad, and mint, parsley and chervil among the herbs. Trained fruit needs sun to ripen and a north facing fence will not do it.

In containers only, the same principles hold with smaller plants: chard, herbs, salad, one courgette in a very large pot, strawberries in anything.

And if you have livestock, a dog or very young children, check what you are adding. A few common garden plants are toxic and edible planting mixed with ornamental means less obvious boundaries about what is safe to pick.

Where the guidance here comes from#

The plant choices and the put it where you walk rule are what has survived several seasons in my own garden, and the second one came from moving herbs twice before admitting the problem was distance. For growing detail, spacing and trained fruit pruning the RHS advice on growing your own is the reference, and Garden Organic is better than most on mixed planting and on managing pests without spraying, which matters more when the crop is among the flowers.

The short version#

Pick edibles you would grow anyway: chard, kale, artichoke, fennel, purple beans, herbs, strawberries. Train fruit flat against a fence for the best return on space in the garden. Put the things you pick often nearest the door. Keep potatoes, onions and brassica rows out of the border. Then sow salad into every gap in April.

Related reading#

• How to start a vegetable garden: the dedicated bed version, for when you want quantity.
• Garden design basics: border depth and layering, which this planting relies on.
• Vertical gardening: beans and trained fruit, and how much more they yield per square metre.
• Victory garden ideas: the opposite approach, and what it gets right.