Kitchen gardening - WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-

Here is a potager or the kitchen garden! And it's a beautiful example of how you can mix ornamentals and edibles in one garden to have a beautiful looking garden that's really productive, too. I would plant some of  edibles even if I had no interest in eating them whatsoever. They are that pretty.

One of my favorite ornamental edibles is the 'Red Peacock' kale. This is an edible kale variety, but it has really serrated leaves which have red veins in them. It has great texture and a lot of color.gets even more red as it gets cooler into the fall. The color gets even more ed in fall with cool weather.

Kitchen gardens always have some herbs, too. Sage is one of my favorites. There is a regular variegated sage, and then there is a tricolored sage. The variegated sage has yellow leaves with the green leaves. The tricolored sage has pink, white and green leaves, all jumbled together.

Around in the arc of this garden are some calendulas. Their edible flowers make a great addition to salad. Just sprinkle some on salads for color and flavor, and of course, if you dead head them really consistently, they will keep flowering for you over and over again.

Another herb  I really like are agastaches. They get pretty tall and this variety has lime green leaf to it with beautiful, little purple flowers. It's great for butterflies. They  love to alight on the flowers and the bees come for nectar and to pollinate it. It's another beautiful plant even if you don't want to eat it.

So you can mix these flowers, herbs and vegetables all together to have a beautiful little kitchen garden right outside your doorway that will enable you to have fresh plants to cook with throughout the season.

By Charlie Nardozzi