GARDENING Mixing vegetables and flowers in the garden

Mix it up a little  


There are no rules, unless you make them

Flower Garden
Margaret Sheehan

For many of us, the cottage garden conjures up images of chickens around the door, hollyhocks and cabbages, delphiniums and lavender, medicinal herbs and climbing roses. However, many of these ideas are the product of Victorian romanticism. In reality, most cottage gardeners of old were unlikely to have access to many varieties, and even if they did, wouldn’t the hens have pulled them up again? Fortunately though, we can still mimic these ideas in our modern gardens. Even if we don’t live in a thatched cottage, we can grow a mixture of plants and retain an attractive garden.
In 19th-century France, the kitchen garden was given a makeover in the formal style of palaces such as Versailles. These gardens, known as potagers, were where vegetables and salads were grown in a decorative fashion. The problem with this idea is that when you harvest, the rigid, formal pattern is spoiled, and of course, in modern Ireland, our gardens are far from the size of French formal displays.
For many of us, space is at a premium, and the decision to grow our own food means sacrificing decorative beds. However, we can combine the urge to grow vegetables, fruit and herbs, with our, often innate, need to grow beautiful flowers. The secret is to mix it up a little, the only rule being that there are no rules in your garden, unless you make them.
For example, currant and gooseberry bushes combine well with perennials, and can grow at the back of a flowerbed, provided they still get some sun. Runner beans, with red or white flowers, can decorate arches and pergolas, and a row of rainbow chard can provide a line of colourful leaves and stems at the front of a bed, long before the annual flowers can be planted outside.
One can try red leaves of beetroot to add colour, or rhubarb to add shape and form. Strawberries can provide ground cover, while sunflowers can be grown and the heads dried to feed the birds in the winter. To add a touch of drama to a flower bed, planting globe artichokes as a centre piece will really make a statement. Chives grown under roses are said to keep greenfly away.
And then there are certain flowers which you can justify growing in the vegetable patch: Marigolds to ward off greenfly, calendulas to disguise carrots, poached-egg plants to attract pollinating insects. Nasturtium leaves and flowers can be eaten, and of course herbs such as rosemary and thyme, blended with lavender and borage, provide edible additions to the flower or veggie bed.  
So, while the reality of the traditional cottage garden was not so good, the availability of seed and plant varieties we have today enables us to can create our own ‘chocolate box’ scene in our own gardens. With a little imagination, and by breaking conventional rules, our gardens can still hanker after the romance of the 19th century, whilst producing some of that much welcomed fresh food.

Margaret Sheehan is a member of Ballinrobe Garden Club, which meets on the first Tuesday of the month at 7.30pm in Tacú Resource Centre, Ballinrobe. New members welcome.