How To Build A Vegetable Garden That Is Both Tasty And Attractive

A healthy vegetable garden can provide you with hours of stress-busting, mental health-boosting fun and give you and your family healthy, organic produce to eat for months. If you have even a few square feet of yard space, planting a vegetable garden is easy and inexpensive. Vegetable gardens don’t have a reputation of being beautiful like flower gardens, however, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Here are some ways to make your veggie garden just as attractive as it is tasty.

Choose Vegetables That Are Actually Visually Striking

Despite popular belief, some vegetables are actually pretty beautiful. You should bring as much color to your vegetable garden as you can. By planting a variety of peppers and eggplants, you can brings purples, oranges, yellows, reds, and green to your garden.

Rainbow chard and other colorful greens are also a good option. Berry bushes give any vegetable garden a pop of color during the summer and fall months. Try to plant your most beautiful vegetables in the most prominent viewing locations. You can hide the less-attractive plants behind them.

Think About Layering/Leveling

The composition of your garden can’t just be focused on color – you also have to think about using the height of different vegetable plants to your advantage. Some gardeners suggest planting lower-profile plants like lettuces, kale, and other leafy greens on the outside.

The inner part of your vegetable garden should be a mix of plants with various profiles: medium profile plants like peppers tomatoes, and herb bushes like rosemary; tall plants and fruit trees; and climbing plants like beans and blackberries. Consider growing vegetables that tend to get unwieldy in raised planters or even inside a backyard solar greenhouse. This way they will be more contained and less of an eyesore for the neighbors.

Don’t Be Afraid To Let Some Vegetable Plants Flower

Some vegetable plants produce gorgeous flowers, but we never see them because we harvest all of the edible parts. Chives, zucchini, artichokes, and pineapple sage all produce pretty flowers. Try to leave some of these plants unharvested and you’ll spice up your vegetable garden with some great-looking blooms.

Remember That Your Vegetable Garden Doesn’t Have To Be All-Vegetable

You can drastically improve the look of a vegetable garden by adding some flowers into the mix. If your vegetable garden is looking too green, for instance, try planting some bright purple or orange flowers within the garden. This works in reverse, as well.

Try planting leafy greens and herb plants as your borders for your flower gardens. No garden has to be 100% segregated between edible and inedible plants. In fact many plants are great at deterring pests who would love to chow down on your tomatoes and squash.

Share The Wealth

If you’re worried about your neighbors being annoyed by a large, unruly front yard vegetable garden, it helps to make it as attractive as possible. But if you really want to make that veggie garden attractive, share the wealth. Offering to share your vegetable bounty with your neighbors will make them a little less picky when it comes to how it looks.

Your vegetable garden doesn’t have to be an untamed mass of green leaves. By letting colorful veggies shine through, being smart about how you plant, letting some vegetables flower, and integrating your vegetable and flower gardens, you can ensure that the garden as a whole is as beautiful as is it delicious and nurturing.

Author Bio: Jennifer co-created Public Health Library to write about health and wellness topics and to create a forum for sharing reputable health and medical information.

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