Whenever you start to design an Edible Landscape/Garden it helps to have some inspiration to use as a guide. You may have a ton of ideas in your head, but – trust me on this – sometimes those ideas don’t always work! It’s never a bad idea to have some backup ideas or to just research those ideas to see if they would work well in your garden. There are also times when you are lacking inspiration and need to get some ideas flowing. Today let’s look at a few ways you can get ideas to help design your edible landscape plan.
Use Your Head!
We’re brainstorming right now so go ahead and use your own brain to write down every idea you might like to implement in your garden. It doesn’t matter at this point how far fetched the idea is just write it down. It can be easily crossed off later. It’s really easy to forget an idea when it comes time to make a plan, even a really good idea so write everything down.
Catalogs and Magazines
Scour the plant catalogs for inspiration of varieties of vegetables to plant. Pay special attention to anything with ornamental value. Anything with colorful foliage or fruit that is one your “To Grow” list should be written down on your list of ideas. Really good catalogs may have growing instructions or seed sowing instructions. You may want to clip a few of these out to save for when it is time to start growing your plants. Magazines offer a lot of great ideas and often you can find people giving away their old copies. Many magazines have online versions where you can look at photo galleries for inspiration too.
Online Sources
Like many other people today the internet is the first place I look for ideas. Millions of ideas are just floating out there ready to be incorporated into your garden. Blogs are good places to look to see how other gardeners have implemented edible landscaping into their gardens. Perhaps the biggest visual idea site of them all is Pinterest. Use the search features on Pinterest to narrow down the ideas some to a more manageable and less overwhelming (or distracting level).
Garden Tours
Garden tours are great for inspiration. If your local garden club or horticultural association has a garden tour open to the public get out your camera and go. Take pictures of everything you enjoy from those tours. Universities and botanical gardens are an awesome resource for ideas. Visit as many gardens as you can when you have the opportunity – and make sure you bring a camera! Other houses in your neighborhood may have already implemented edible landscaping into their plan so take note of what people near you have done, what works and what didn’t. The plants that succeeded in their garden should have a good chance in yours!
Perhaps the most important things you can do is ask questions. Gardeners freely share information about their experiences which really is a great way to get ideas. Bounce off a few ideas to the gardening friends you know, speakers you might listen to, authors you read, or professionals nearby. Finding ideas for your edible landscape plan is the fun part of your plan. It’s the part where you get to dream about what your garden could be. Use your imagination and absorb all those ideas because soon you’ll have to narrow them down into what you can actually implement in your garden.
Look here for previous posts in the Edible Landscaping for Beginners Series!
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I do like the idea of an edible landscape, too often people think that to grow veggies the garden will look ugly and unattractive, yet with careful consideration and planning the results can be stunning.
Gaz Alternative Eden