EDIBLE LANDSCAPING. That appealing phrase sounds just like what it is: an approach meant to be not just delicious but also delicious-looking. So where do we start integrating plants we grow to eat into our ornamental gardens? Or, to come at it the other way: How do we make our edible areas more like gardens, not production areas? I asked Lisa Hilgenberg, the Fruit and Vegetable Garden Horticulturist at Chicago Botanic Garden.
Lisa is a native Minnesotan, whose family has been farming their land since the 1880s. She embraces her agricultural heritage in her role at Chicago Botanic managing nearly 4 acres of edibles in the Fruit and Vegetable Garden (below), following USDA standards for organic growing.
With a crew of three plus 30 volunteers, Lisa curates and interprets a collection of more than 600 edible plants and two orchards. Last year the team grew 55,000 vegetables, producing 3 tons of fresh produce.
In time to shop the new year’s catalogs with an eye to some edible landscaping innovations in our own backyards, Lisa and I talked about what edibles would work to create living fencing and screening, and others that make portable edible moments, in containers—including new dwarf fruit selections and more.
Read along as you listen to the Dec. 28, 2015 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).my edible-landscaping q&a with lisa hilgenberg
Q. The CBG Fruit and Vegetable Garden is distinctive not just for its diverse collection of edibles, but for its geography—it has a distinctive location in the garden, doesn’t it? [Laughter.]
A. It does. We’re an island [map, below], which really helps me out as
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Today we’re back in the Forest Park, Illinois, garden of Enrique Zuniga and Christian Altman, a space they transformed from a blank piece of turfgrass into a beautiful garden that attracts pollinators and is enjoyed by them, their three dogs, and their friends alike. We saw some of the garden yesterday and are back to enjoy more of it today.
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Also called the weathering steel, cor-ten steel is maintenance free. It is developed to eliminate the need for painting. It is a group of steel alloys that form a stable rust-like appearance if exposed to the weather for several years. Read more about corten steel on Wikipedia.
Want to add a tropical flair to your garden this spring? Elephant ears will add a bold statement to a filtered sun or high shade spot. These striking “drama queens” of the garden may be either in genera Colocasia or Alocasia. The easiest way to tell these beauties apart is that colocasias (Colocasia esculenta) will have leaves that point downward, and alocasia (Alocasia species) leaves will point upward. Depending on the species or cultivar of each genus, the size can range from 3 to 10 feet tall and 2 to 10 feet in width. Both types of elephant ears are native to the tropical regions of Southeastern Asia.
As summer fades and fall’s cool temperatures and moist days arrive, this is a fantastic time for planting perennials, shrubs, and trees. Under these conditions, plants get time to establish roots without the stresses of summer heat and dryness. Luckily, this is also time for the South Carolina Botanical Garden’s semi-annual plant sale. As well as offering great quality plants of all kinds, plant sales are our major fundraiser. Through them, you support our operations and the enhancements made to this unique and free public garden. The catalog is available online for pre-sale planning Preview the Catalog (PDF). Garden staff, volunteers, and Clemson University students will be available at the sale to help with plant selection. In addition, several partner organizations set up booths at the sale to answer questions about gardening-related topics and activities. To find out who will be here this year, check the catalog. For additional information, please contact Misty Shealy, Nursery Manager, at [email protected].
As a new year begins, educators at the South Carolina Botanical Garden at Clemson University are excited for a new season of classes and events for all ages. Our entire new calendar is here.
The English-born Capon, a doctor of botany from the University of Chicago who went on to be a professor at California State University, Los Angeles for 30 years, has since retired, leaving time for the revamping of “Botany for Gardeners,” the bestselling title for its publisher, Timber Press, in the U.S. and England.Not only did Capon write it; he illustrated it, too, and even took the plant photographs that further bring the text to life. Capon is also a lifelong gardener, though images of his own place never appear in the pages.“Botany for Gardeners” was born as a textbook out of lecture notes for a botany class Capon taught for many years to non-science students, so it’s thorough—but not the kind of dense, full-fledged botany text that will scare you away.In fact (even 20 years later), it just keeps drawing me back in, especially for tidbits like these. Did you know:That litmus, the dye used to indicate acidity and alkalinity, is
Andrew, who is now assistant director of the Chicago Botanic Garden, is past president of Magnolia Society International’s board of directors, and remains a member of the society’s board. In his tenure over 20 years as curator at Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Andrew built the magnolia collection from about 50 to more than 200 cultivars. That’s a lot of magnolias.Now Andrew Bunting is author of a book on the queen of flowering trees, called “The Plant Lover’s Guide to Magnolias,” just out from Timber Press as part of an ongoing series on various distinctive genera of plants.We talked magnolias on my public-radio show and podcast. Read along while you listen in to the April 25, 2016 edition of the podcast using the player below (or at this link)–and even learn how to train a magnolia or any w
HOW DID I MISSED MARIA POPOVA’S bee item on her compelling Brain Pickings site in September, when she gathered (or curated, as she calls it) disparate inspirations about the essential creatures, whose plight on earth is so severely challenged? Through Maria’s filter, their story is told with two very different must-watch videos, some truly up-close-and-personal electron microscope photographs, and her own words.SOMEONE ASKED ME ABOUT EDIBLE LANDSCAPING the other day, and I realized I’d lost track of the important, inspiring work of Rosiland Creasy, but now here she is: in the “Los Angeles Times” this week, for instance, with a new edition o
I SAY THANK YOU to the University of Chicago Press for investing in “Weeds of North America” (above) by Richard Dickinson and France Royer. The Canadian authors have created a massive work (800 pages paperbound) covering 500 of the continent’s pest plants, including aquatics. Key ID tips include not just flower and foliage photos, but also images of seeds and seedlings.This serious reference volume illuminates other reasons to consider the plants as pests, beyond the space they steal from natives. Such traits include toxicity to livestock (like milk thistle) or transmitting a disease to a valuable crop (like barberry does w