Plant a pretty border of EDIBLE TREATS
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Enjoying the best of both worlds with edimentals – plants that are both edible and ornamental
Haven’t got room for a veggie patch as well as all the flowers you want to grow in your plot? Then edimentals could be right up your garden street.
Simply put, an edimental is an edible ornamental flower or vegetable that looks fab, is easy to grow and will also offer up a delicious feast (no allotment needed!). They bring together the best of both worlds and mean we don’t have to choose between growing veggies or flowers, as one plant can deliver the benefits of both.
These sorts of plants have been around for eons, but it was at RHS Chelsea Flower Show last year that their benefits were highlighted, sparking the huge trend we’re now seeing. Inspired by the cost of living crisis along with shortages of some types of fresh food, The School Food Matters Garden, designed by Harry Holding, and the Planet Good Earth garden, by Betongpark & Urban Organic, showed how growing your own edimentals is a simple, yet viable option.
Chances are you’ve already got flowers that are edible, and by adding in some easy-grow veg, you can have yourselves a really tasty border, in more ways than one! Here, we’ve hand-picked the best edimentals to grow with the best ratio of scrumptious reward to effort, all giving serious bang for not-much-space!
1 DAYLILY
Known as hemerocallis, from the Greek term that means beautiful for a day, the daylily does exactly what it says on the tin – it flowers for just a day! But new ones keep coming for months on end so you can eat all parts of the plant while still admiring its beauty. It’s a hardy perennial, dying off in autumn and coming back in spring, and it’s one of the most indestructible plants you can grow.
Pluck the young shoots and add them to a stir-fry or pick young buds, which taste like a cross between asparagus and peas, and sauté with a bit of butter and garlic. Decorate salads with the pretty petals or dip them in batter and deep fry for tempura, just like courgette flowers. You can also cut off most of a clump of daylily roots, replanting the remainder so it can carry on growing, scrub and use the tubers like a potato. Make sure to buy daylily (hemerocallis) plants, not other plants with ‘lily’ in their names.
Happy in sun or light shade, this salmon-pink lovely with trumpet-shaped blooms and golden-yellow centres flowers from July to August and grows to Height 75cm Spread 60cm. £5.80/9cm pot claireaustin-hardyplants.co.uk
One of the earliest flowering daylilies, Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus produces masses of fr
