In Europe [after the fall of the Roman empire] ... few plants were grown for any but medicinal uses, and none at all for pleasure.  To earn its place in the garden, a plant had to be 'good for something.'
-- Anne Ophelia Dowden, This Noble Harvest: A Chronicle of Herbs

I remember the time that I spent with the Karok Indians of northern California - whenever I presented one of them with an unfamiliar plant, the invevitable question was 'What's it good for?' Certainly the Indians love nature as their home, but rather than merely holding an aesthetic viewpoint about it they combine a sincere appreciation for its beauty with a functional attitude.
-- Michael Tierra, The Way of Herbs

 

Edible Landscaping

Resources to accompany Joanne Poyourow's
Edible Landscaping lectures and articles

Welcome to the world of Edible Landscaping!  Welcome to creativity, expansion of boundaries, reclaiming our heritage, and evolving our cultural knowledge base.  (And you thought it just meant homegrown produce!)

Some of the resources highlight Southern California issues, because that is where Joanne gardens, and Los Angeles was the site of the original presentations.  However many resources listed were written about gardens in other climates, proving that most garden resources are adaptable to gardens everywhere, with a bit of creativity and reading-between-the-lines.

.jump to sections:  Garden Design ... Garden Design, layout ... Garden Design, photos ... Plant Selection ... Plant Sources ... Harvest and Use ... Organic Techniques ... Container Gardens ... Getting Serious ... Perennial edibles ... Why edible landscaping?

.abbreviation used:  LAPL=Los Angeles Public Library

Garden Design

Edible Landscaping = visual + functional 
A garden designer begins by considering the potential of the site, the needs of the garden's users (kids?  pets?), and the shapes and forms desired to frame or block views, etc.  With edible landscaping we add an additional element: Yield.

Poyourow, Joanne, "Edible Landscaping" (pdf).   A four-part article covering various aspects of edible landscaping design and plant selection.

Brookes, John, The Book of Garden Design (available at LAPL).
Landscaping is a three-dimensional art form, and this book explains design using plants.  Brookes invites us to think in terms of site, framework, shapes and textures, illustrating these with beautiful photographs of ornamental gardens.

de la Tour, Shatoiya and Richard, The Herbalist's Garden.
A beautiful coffee-table caliber photo book of 10 herb gardens.  The text showcases a few herb plants, but this book is mainly recommended for the gorgeous illustrations of the beauty a herb garden can be. Includes Rosemary Gladstar's garden and the Williamsburg historical restoration garden.

Jones, Louisa, The Art of French Vegetable Gardening (available at LAPL).  The quintessential photo book of vegetable gardening.  The pictures are coffee-table caliber, and never fail to inspire me.  Styles range from formal potagers to near-wild.  This book redefines the vegetable garden as art and beauty.

Flores, H.C. Food Not Lawns encourages you to expand your ideas of which portions of your urban property should grow your food.

Gildemeister, Heidi, "The Edible Garden" chapter within her book Gardening the Mediterranean Way: How to create a waterwise, drought-tolerant garden (available at LAPL).
A mere 10 pages, the text of this chapter gets one thinking of the range of possibilities, from thinking in terms of garden design -trees, shrubs and perennials, climbers, ground covers - to broadening our view of what consititues "edible."

Woodyard, Cynthia, The Complete Kitchen Garden: The art of designing and planting an edible garden.
This one is entirely about design.  Chapters focus on elements such as paths, edges, walls, fences, arbors, greenhouses.  It includes much about formal layouts.  A section covers  color, form and texture in the kitchen garden. The book has an international focus, but this adds to the variety of ideas presented.

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GARDEN DESIGN, LAYOUT

... LAYOUT - FULL SITE

An introductory explanation of Permaculture zones. And a cheery online article by Toby Hemenway explaining how they're used.  (If you've never heard of Permaculture, read this delightful piece: Permaculture, A Beginner's Guide)

Hemenway, Toby, Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture  includes easy-to-understand explanations of where to place the outdoor elements of your property, from intensive vegetable garden to orchard to composter.

A circa-2002 explanation of how Joanne adapted the zones concept into water use zones for her garden.

Marcin, Marietta Marshall, Herbal Tea Gardens (available at LAPL).
Line drawing illustrations of the layout for 17 medicinal herb gardens including a relaxation garden and a first aid garden.  Includes charts that detail the mature size of common and not-so-common herb plants, and extensive section on the cultivation of herb plants.  Many recipes.

Online, see the Community Garden at Holy Nativity in Westchester, CA, designed by Joanne.  Layout of the vegetable portion circa spring 2009.  Layout of the medicinal/culinary herb garden.  Map of the garden.  photos linked below.

... LAYOUT -FRUIT TREES

Woodrow, Linda, The Permaculture Home Garden
and
Jacke, Dave, Edible Forest Gardens: Design and Practice (i.e. volume 2 of his set)
These two books encourage you to design your garden so that your fruit trees ripen in sequence rather than all at once.  These books include tables for approximating harvest dates. 
One book is written for Australia, and the other for Oregon, so I use ripening tables as follows: I find a listed tree for which I know the So. Calif. ripening times.  I then see when other trees are forecast to ripen (+3 weeks from my known tree; -5 weeks from known tree) and I translate the entire table in this fashion to guess when other trees might ripen.  It seems to work pretty well!

... LAYOUT - VEGETABLE SPACING

The French Intensive Method of spacing says you can plant vegetables close enough so that the leaves of the mature plant just touch.  This results in far more efficient use of land than in the row method.  The catch is, the gardener must maintain rich soil in order to support the greater number of plants.

Jeavons, John, How To Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine includes highly detailed tables for vegetable plant spacing and layout in intensive plantings.  
Jeavons' book also includes a great illustration of how much more efficient intensive plantings are than row method plantings.

Bartholomew, Mel, Square-Foot Gardening gives some simplified spacing and layout information for vegetable gardens.  Here's a real bare-bones description of it online. Joanne used this method to start out, prior to 'graduating' to Jeavons.  Note that even Bartholomew's newly revised version is not completely organic, so Joanne recommends this book for physical layout only, not for soil and plant care methods.

... LAYOUT - CROP ROTATION

Rotating crops means avoiding planting the same kind of plant in the same spot year after year.  We do this to avoid build-up of pests, and to make better use of soil nutrients.

Some plants are heavy users of soil nutrients, others are light users, and still others (legumes, dynamic accumulators) are soil replenishers.

A detailed description of the crop rotations Joanne designed for the Community Garden at Holy Nativity.  Layout of the vegetable portion circa spring 2009.

Jeavons, John, How To Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine identifies which vegetables are high/low users, and which are soil replenishers.  Some of this information can be gleaned online through the catalog of his non-profit, Bountiful Gardens but it's probably much easier to look for his book.  (LAPL)  Jeavons never leaves soil fallow, using instead a soil-replenishing mix of plants which includes "compost crops" (plants grown specifically to produce carbon bulk to create compost).

Michalak, Patricia S, Rodale's Successful Organic Gardening: Vegetables describes a traditional crop rotation, with four sequential raised beds.

The Synergistic Garden, Emilia Hazelip (VHS or DVD available through The Permaculture Activist) shows an innovative rotation where one rotates groups of companion vegetables between beds.  This one is the method I've been using lately.  It's also described here online, but I find the article difficult to follow.  I'll write about it online in the near future - check back here.

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Garden Design, photos

For delicious photos of edible landscaping, see any of the following:

Jones, The Art of French Vegetable Gardening
Guerra, The Edible Container Garden
White, et al, The Edible Garden (Sunset)
de la Tour, The Herbalist's Garden
Caplin, Urban Eden (published in UK)
Creasy, The Edible Heirloom Garden
Creasy, The Edible Salad Garden
Gertley, The Art of the Kitchen Garden

Online, see the Community Garden at Holy Nativity in Westchester, CA, designed by Joanne.  Additional photos of this garden can be found here and here.   The garden includes a productive vegetable plot, a medicinal/culinary herb garden, a rainwater harvesting garden, and more.  Map of this garden.

Photos in the left margin of this webpage include the gardens of Path To Freedom and Joanne's garden. Another photo of Path To Freedom is at "Why" below.

Plant Selection

Part of Edible Landscaping is acknowledging that the site of our particular garden will dictate what we grow.  We may not be able to grow some of the dozen common vegetables you'd find at the supermarket, yet most garden sites can yield a marvelous bounty of delightful tastes.  Expand your concept of what constitutes "edible," discover what is possible at your site, venture into the unusual ...

California Rare Fruit Growers.  A network of hobbyists and professionals, this organization compiles a wealth of knowledge on their website.  Check out their Fruit Facts for in-depth descriptions of specific fruits. Caution:  many of the California Rare Fruit Growers listed fruits are high-water, high-needs tropical species.

Clarke, Charlotte, Bringle, Edible and Useful Plants of California.
Listed by California ecosystem (foothills, deserts, wetlands), this book gives short descriptions of the habitat and uses of many California natives, and a few common non-natives.  Includes a few historic and contemporary recipes.  Chapters on foothills and deserts will direct you to drought tolerant edibles.

Marcin, Marietta Marshall, Herbal Tea Gardens (available at LAPL).
Line drawing illustrations of the layout for 17 medicinal herb gardens including a relaxation garden and a first aid garden.  Includes charts that detail the mature size of common and not-so-common herb plants, and extensive section on the cultivation of herb plants.  Many recipes.

Reich, Lee, Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention (available at LAPL).
Listed by type of fruit, gives description of flavor and use, cultivation, propagation, harvest and use.  Some fruits mentioned require chill hours (i.e. cooler winter temperatures than we have in Los Angeles) but the book gives you a mind-broadening idea of what can be grown in a home garden.  Describes 19 fruits, including such wonders as Alpine strawberries, mullberry, asian pear, medlar.

Michalak, Patricia S, Rodale's Successful Organic Gardening: Vegetables (available at LAPL.  Also in series are Herbs, and Fruits and Berries).
In addition to general advice about organic gardening techniques, these essential guides give a detailed listing of each vegetable, some common and some not-so-common.  They give a photo, and some information about growing requirements, dimensions, and seasonality.  Excellent resource for planning; I use it in conjunction with Jeavons (under Organic Techniques, below).

Schneider, Elizabeth, Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables: A Common Sense Guide (available at LAPL).
Contains detailed description of nearly 100 fruits, vegetables and fungi, together with 2-3 gourmet caliber recipes for each.  The text is a mind-broadening tour of edible plants one won't find in a typical supermarket.

The plants and flowers on display at the Los Angeles presentation on 4/27/06 included:  fennel / Foeniculum vulgare (the lacy fern-like greens); cilantro (the white Queen Anne's Lace-like flowers); nasturtiums (the large bright orange and yellow edible flowers); alpine strawberry; Tagetes lemonii (the orange daisy, drought tolerant tea herb); johnny-jump-ups / Viola tricolor (the tiny pansy-like edible flower); rosemary; and Chenopodium giganteum, variously known as magenta spreen, huazontle and aztec spinach.

Plant list for Joanne's garden (pdf) in Westchester/Los Angeles, CA.  Our city lot is approx 9,000 sqft.  The list of species reflects the changing focus of the garden, from prior owner, to xeriscape (i.e. drought-tolerant) ornamentals, to Calif native plants and wildlife habitat, segueing to edible landscaping.

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Plant sources

Bay Laurel nursery - a mail order nursery which sells bare root fruit trees, grape vines, berries.  Los Angeles gardeners should shop from their online list of "low chill varieties."

Bountiful Gardens - open pollinated (i.e. not hybrids or GMOs), biodynamic herb and vegetable seed.  Your purchase supports a wonderful worldwide outreach program.

Larner's Seed - a mail order source for seeds of California native wildflowers and plants.  Many of the plants mentioned by Charlotte Bringle Clark can be obtained here.

Las Pilitas - a mail order source which sells California natives.  Many of the plants mentioned by Charlotte Bringle Clark can be obtained here.  Note Las Pilitas' list of California native edibles.

Native Seed/SEARCH - a nonprofit mail order source for heirloom Native American vegetable and herb seed.  Some of these varieties were developed for dry farming (watered only by the seasonal monsoon rains of the Southwest), thus they are more drought tolerant.

Seeds of Change - a mail order source for heirloom vegetable and herb seed.

Theodore Payne Foundation, Sun Valley, CA - a private foundation which sells California natives.  Many of the plants mentioned by Charlotte Bringle Clark can be seen and purchased at their Los Angeles basin location.

Victory Seed - a family-run mail order business.  This family is passionate about preserving heirloom vegetables, flowers and herbs.

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Harvest and Use

many of the resources under "Plant Selection" give harvest and use information.

Shepherd, Renee, Recipes from a Kitchen Garden (available at LAPL).
Often a gourmet cookbook calls for out-of-season or imported ingredients.  The significance of this garden-to-table cookbook is that the recipes are designed such that a single sweep through the garden could collect most of the ingredients necessary:  the items called for mature in similar season and under similar conditions to one another.

D'Avila-Latourrette, Victor, Twelve Months of Monastery Soups (available at LAPL).  Another garden-to-table cookbook, creating gourmet glory from simple and frugal garden-fresh ingredients.  Beware, his parsnip soup is addicting!

Peterson, John, Farmer John's Cookbook:  The Real Dirt on Vegetables (available at LAPL).  Farmer John runs one of the country's largest CSA's outside Chicago.  He seems to have created this recipe book for his customers.  The delight is, the recipes use what would be in a typical month's CSA box, i.e. most of the ingredients ripen and harvest at the same time.  While we in Los Angeles would adjust chapters for our seasons, the recipe combinations are quite valuable.

Schneider, Elizabeth, Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini (available at LAPL).
Detailed descriptions, recipes, photos of several hundred unusual vegetables and fungi. Many of these grow easily in Los Angeles.

Schneider, Elizabeth, Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables: A Common Sense Guide (available at LAPL).
Contains detailed description of nearly 100 fruits, vegetables and fungi, together with 2-3 gourmet-caliber recipes for each.  The text is a mind-broadening tour of edible plants one won't find in a typical supermarket.

Terre Vivante, Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques and Recipes (available at LAPL).  Caution:  there is another book in print with a similar title.  I only recommend the Terre Vivante book.
The quintessential guide to the lost art of food preservation, but if you have a bountiful home garden you'll need this knowledge.  How to preserve food using a variety of methods, from canning, to sugar, to alcohol, to oil based preservation.

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Organic Techinques

"Feed your soil, and your soil will feed you." 
(I think that's a quote from Jeavons but I've memorized it so don't remember the source!)

Poyourow, Joanne, "Build the Soil"

Jeavons, John, How To Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine (available at LAPL).  This slim volume is a wealth of information about the sustainable gardening method called Biodynamic gardening, of which Jeavons is one of the developers.  Growing information for beginners and veterans alike, this is a book you will refer to again and again.  If you buy it, please do so through Bountiful Gardens to support their outreach program which distributes this information to third world countries.

For a quick tour of the Biointensive ideas, read GrowBiointensive.org

Compost workshops and discounted compost bins (both worm composting and conventional) are available in Los Angeles County.  See SmartGardening.com for schedule.  This site also has articles on the basics of composting.

Gardening Organically email group at YahooGroups.  For ongoing support and discussion of organic gardening issues, this 1400+person international community is delightful.

Michalak, Patricia S, Rodale's Successful Organic Gardening: Vegetables (available at LAPL.  Also in series are Herbs, and Fruits and Berries).
In addition to general advice about organic gardening techniques, these essential guides give a detailed listing of each plant, some common and some not-so-common.  They give a photo, and some information about growing requirements, dimensions, and seasonality.  Excellent resource for planning; I use it in conjunction with Jeavons.

Poyourow, Joanne, "Obtain a Yield," (pdf).   Articles addresses the question:  why edible landscaping?

Poyourow, Joanne, "Going Organic" (pdf).   Article about how to begin on the organic gardening journey.

Poyourow, Joanne, "Doctorate In organic Gardening," (pdf).  A booklist of recommendations for everything from soil, to pest control, to companion planting.  Ideal for newcomers to organic gardening.  Many of the books mentioned are available at LAPL.

Poyourow, Joanne, "Seed Saving"

Poyourow, Joanne, "Vegetable Crop Rotations"

Compost happens", article and photo essay on building a compost pile

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Container Gardens

Yes, you can create an edible landscape in pots on your patio or balcony!

Caplin, Adam and James, Urban Eden. 
A beautiful photo book about gardening in small spaces.  It doesn't claim to be about edibles but it does include many photos of vegetables and herbs integrated into patio and balcony spaces.  From the UK, but you'll only discover that when they give dimensions to things in meters with U.S. measurements as parentheticals.

Guerra, Michael, The Edible Container Garden: Growing Fresh Food in Small Spaces (available at LAPL).
Gorgeous and inspiring photos of small-space gardens from around the world.  The text contains useful information too.

McGee & Stuckey, The Bountiful Container (available at LAPL).
Tells how to grow virtually any edible plant in containers, even fruit trees!  Many dwarf or smaller varieties of common plants are listed.  The gardening techniques are not necessarilly completely organic, however their recommendations for container size and variety selection are unequalled.

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Getting Serious

for more "advanced" level information, consult the following ...

Shapiro, Howard-Yana, Gardening for the Future of the Earth.  Collected essays and interviews by visionary change-makers about soil, water, biodiversity and more.  This intense book will show you Why our earth and our future generations need us to rediscover edible landscaping.

Hemenway, Toby, Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture.  Excellent explanations for adapting the Permaculture principles of Holmgren and Mollison to a home-scale garden.

Whitefield, Patrick, How To Make a Forest Garden.  Deeper detail about vertical layering, taking your design into the third dimension, upward in space.

Woodrow, Linda, The Permaculture Home Garden.  A very practical guide to a deeply considered, sustainable, year round, high yielding home garden.  Published in Australia, you may have to import it through Bookfinder.com or similar.

Tenaqiya, Rain, West Coast Food Forestry: A Permaculture Guide.  Okay, when I ordered this one from Permaculture Activist, I expected a book.  Instead, it's a CD, rich with full-color plant photos, a catalog of edible/useful plants which you read on your computer.  You'll learn about edible plants you've never heard of before.  Although his idea of 'West Coast' runs from Washington state to Northern California (hey, what's with that?) I still deem this one excellent.

Jacke, Dave, Edible Forest Gardens: Design and Practice (i.e. volume 2 of his set). This one could be a textbook for edibles.  Hard-core, heavy duty design information.  Rich with charts and tables.  Note: his co-author promises us a book about perennial vegetables to be released in 2007!

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PERENNIAL EDIBLES

(this section is under construction - please check back soon)

Whitefield, Patrick, How To Make a Forest Garden. 

Tenaqiya, Rain, West Coast Food Forestry: A Permaculture Guide (electronic book on CD, available through The Permaculture Activist)

Toensmeier, Eric, Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles (due out in May '07) I have my copy on preorder! Can't wait!

Perennial edibles in Joanne's Los Angeles garden include:  fruit trees & shrubs (citruses, peach, pomegranate, feijoas, currants), herbs (rosemary, oregano, thyme, culinary sage, horehound, yarrow, bay, etc.), alpine strawberries, welsh onions.  Expermental in '07 include:  multiplier onions, cardoon.
Biennials which linger as if to be perennials, thus qualifying for the low-soil-disturbance aspects of perennials:  kale (Pentland and Lacinato).  Then there's the whole class of self-reseeders which are perpetually on the property (even in the kids' playplace lawn) so qualify for the low-care aspects of perennials:  daikon, chard, collards, parsnips, par cel, cilantro, corn salad/mache, arugula.  See Plant list for Joanne's garden (pdf)

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Why Edible Landscaping?

Growing even a small portion of your food …
* Cuts oil use / pollution / greenhouse gas emissions of importing food
* Land use: puts city footprint to use
* Water use: landscape water performs dual duty – aesthetic AND food production
* Health: you control the amount of chemicals in your food
* Health: eating with the seasons means eating vegetables at maximum freshness, peak of ripeness, maximum nutrition
* Health: movement, weight-bearing exercise, stretching, fresh air
* Land stewardship: fewer chemicals on land and in storm drains to ocean (no ChemLawn)
* Nature: foster biodiversity through heirloom vegetable varieties
* Nature: polycropping provides habitat and food for pollinators and other living species
* Composting means waste diversion from landfills; saves oil use/pollution/greenhouse gas emissions of hauling away green trash; builds rich soil life
* Spirit: it’s fun, it’s relaxing, purposeful action is fulfilling, and edible landscaping reconnects us to the cycles of the planet

                                                                        

                     

“Why all this push for edible landscaping?”

“It’s not just edible landscaping. It’s the gardens, the cooking, the doing-it-ourselves. It’s a whole way of being. People have lost it, yet we’ve brought it alive, right here.” Jana’s gesture included the entire triplex and gardens. “People have fallen out of the habit of doing things hands-on. We have become a society of packaged materials and kits, where all the pieces are purchased. The reeducation will be in getting people back in touch with their creativity and resourcefulness, persuading them to roll up their sleeves and get dirty.

“Edible landscaping gets people back in touch with the land. We need to reengage them in the earth, touching it, surrounding themselves with its cycles. Whenever we go through weeks on end where our food comes out of boxes and plastic packages, weeks on end when we go from air conditioned office to freeway automobile to isolated urban residence, we become estranged, we literally ‘lose touch’ with our connection to this planet.

“Once people lose that connection, it’s easy to forget natural capital, it’s easy to focus solely on the artificial realm of humans, it’s easy to get into taking and raping the planet. We lose touch with the fact that a part of us is part of the planet.”

-- conversation between characters Tia and Jana in Chapter 5 of Legacy, by Joanne Poyourow

Halweil, Brian, Eat Here: Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket (available at LAPL)  Explains the politics of our food system, the environmental benefits of eating locally.  What could possibly be more local than one's own backyard?

Shapiro, Howard-Yana, Gardening for the Future of the Earth.  Explains how our environmental solutions all come together in the garden.  Covers soil, water, biodiversity and more.

Poyourow, Joanne, Legacy.  Shows the interrelated nature of our environmental and social issues, with edible landscaping as a key solution, particularly within urban and suburban centers.

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Photo credits: gardens of the Path To Freedom Urban Homestead, Pasadena, CA, photo by the author; Painted Lady runner bean flowers in the author's garden, photo by the author; Swiss Chard 6 by Nathalie Dulex, Montreaux, Vaud, Switzerland; grapes in the author's garden, photo by the author; lemon cucumbers in the author's garden, photo by the author; lavendar, by Russell Jones, Hayes, London, UK.  Inset: gardens of the Path To Freedom Urban Homestead, Pasadena, CA, photo by the author.