Grow your own with style

Don’t miss the chance to grow your own supper. Alys Fowler suggests some pretty delicious ways to transform your plot

  • Juicy fruits: Belfast sinks work wonderfully for shallow-rooted vegetables, such as salad leaves, radishes and strawberries.I love 'Mara de Bois', a French heirloom alpine strawberry. It fruits all summer long with a flavour you won't believe.
  • Raise it up: Raised beds solve the problem of a difficult-to-dig lawn. Simply lay cardboard over the grass, build the raised bed at least eight inches deep and fill with compost and soil. There's no need to dig, as the cardboard will suppress the grass.
  • In the bag: The only thing that limits your growing is your own imagination. To keep it stylish, try to stick to the same colour, and remember that all pots and growing bags need drainage.
  • Boxing clever: No garden? You'll have to be more creative with your space. Window boxes need to be at least six inches deep (but ideally more) for veg. If it's shady, stick to herbs such as mint and parsley, and remember to water them. Not much rain actually hits a ledge.
  • Can-ny move: I love a bit of thrift, and old tins create a vintage-inspired look. Line metal containers with thick cardboard and grow sun-loving herbs such as basil, chives and coriander, or shallow-rooting varieties of lettuce.
  • Table display: Pick your own straight from the table. Grow extra plants so that once one lot is over, you can replace them with a fresh batch. Dark red and lime green lettuce, such as 'Salad Bowl Mixed', make an arresting combination.
Images Videos

An edible garden should look just as good as it tastes. This is not about relegating the vegetables to the bottom of the plot. Gone are the days when growing your own meant adopting allotment-style beds.

Sure, your garden needs to be productive if you want something for supper, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be pretty or stylish.

Whether you decide to build raised beds or just add a few vegetables to your borders, start planning the changes now because spring will be upon us before you know it.

There are two basic design routes: the French potager style, where vegetables are grown formally in patterns, often in box-edged beds, or the more romantically informal route of the cottage garden, where cabbages and roses sit side by side.

If you’ve got feet rather than acres, there are many benefits to weaving it all together. For starters, you can pack more in. Companion planting will add colour and provide nutrients in the soil, and will also attract beneficial insects and help to ward off certain pests. The trick is making it all work effectively in a small space.

Award-wining garden designer Patricia Fox, of Aralia Garden Design, understands this well: her courtyard garden for the 2009 Chelsea Flower Show made use of all available space. One of the most successful elements was a wall of salads. This clever design trick married new technology with eye-catching design.

If space is limited, Patricia agrees that what’s most important is to choose vegetables that you love to eat. “Go for the more unusual varieties that are hard to get hold of from the shops, or which taste particularly good picked fresh, such as pak choi or mizuna, rather than growing carrots which take up a lot of space and are very cheap to buy,” she suggests.

Rocket, lettuce and salad leaves are generally easy to grow and offer you quick returns; most salads are also just as happy in a pot as they are in the ground.

Look for ‘patio’ ranges (suitable for growing in pots) or those bred for small gardens. Old varieties of some veg, like cabbages and cauliflowers, can grow very large. Another good space-saving trick is to train fruit trees up against fences or walls – you’ll get blossom in spring, fruit in autumn and, in winter, you can admire the glossy grey bark and fattening buds.

Patricia Fox loves to use architectural edibles to give her designs impact and structure. Try using tall, striking perennials, such as globe artichokes and dusky bronze fennel, for height or add structures, such as a pergola or an obelisk, that allow you to grow climbing vegetables – runner beans have pretty scarlet flowers, before the crisp, fresh beans appear.

Back