Aesthetic Edible Garden Designs - Edible Landscapes Can Be Beautiful

While researching edible landscaping and gardening, I have come across lots of great resources for inspiring truly spectacular edible landscapes and gardens. I want to share some of these resources:

My favorite, a formal residential garden (below) reminiscent of a European cottage garden, comes from Kitchen Gardener Magazine. In addition to stunning photos, Marcia Macdonald also provides a thorough explanation of each step of her design.

Marcia Macdonald's formal kitchen garden from Kitchen Gardener Magazine

Not every design is as formal as Macdonald's, but I have found dozens of beautiful garden designs that produce fresh, healthy food.



GardenPlanIdeas.com has a bevy of beautiful, functional designs, like this herb garden (below). I love the stepping stones that lead to the center from each side.

Beautiful herb garden design from GardenPlanIdeas.com

GardenPlanIdeas.com has a handful of other how-tos and designs, including an unusual basil and annual "knot garden".

An Atlanta landscaping company, Botanica, displays edible landscape designs (like the one below) that are simply magnificent. Once on their site, be sure to click on their images for the full-size drawing so that you can see the list of edible perennials included in the landscape.

Beautiful edible landscape designed by Botanica in Atlanta

If you like a more unstructured, casual-cottage style, Rosalind Creasy, who literally wrote the book on edible landscaping, has created just that type of garden, and it is stunning. She has posted lots of photos and a detailed explanation of the edibles in her landscaping. I'm not posting one of her photos here because you really must read her blog article and see all of the photos she posted with it. She has additional photos posted here.

The Urban Ton Project may sound like a big community project, but he's a garden blogger who challenged himself to grow one ton (2,000 lb) of food on his small, urban homesite (0.2 acre). He outlined a delightful front yard design in 2010 with more than 30 varieties of perennial edibles. They have only posted two updates this year, but last year's archives are wonderful and well worth reading (skip the weigh-in updates and go straight to the good stuff, like this and this and this and this - yes, I did throw cute baby chicks photos in there). They even have an article detailing the cost of their edible landscaping (not including sweat equity).

The Prudent Homemaker has one of my favorite edible landscapes (below). She has created a backyard that is perfect for entertaining, child's play, or just relaxing, and it's filled with edibles. She has posted many additional photos, along with a detailed explanation of her design and what she's planted.

The Prudent Homemaker's back yard. One of my favorites.

It's not exactly edible landscaping, but Southern Living Magazine has an absolutely stunning garden (below) for their test kitchens. They have a slideshow with lots of photos and notes about their garden design. Their design would certainly make for a beautiful back yard.

Southern Living's edible garden for their test kitchen.

Eden Makers blog has photos of a front yard made over into a edible, Tudor-style knot garden. They have before and after photos of the freshly planted landscape in February 2011. Hopefully, they will provide updates with photos of the mature plantings later this year or sometime next year.

Garden Design Associates was also featured by Southern Living for an edible landscape they designed and created for a client. They used a lot of brick hardscape to create a East coast style, which wouldn't work well here in Arizona, but it is beautiful.

TreeHugger.com also has a slideshow of 18 Beautiful Edible Plants, which features unusual edibles like serviceberries alongside old favorites like chives and pawpaws.

Other Beautiful Edible Landscapes?

If you know of other beautiful, edible landscapes that should be on this page, send me the link, and I'll add an update. I'd like to create a good resource for other people like me who are looking for ideas. Also, if you would like to send me your own photos, I would love to post them!