Designing Spring’s Prettiest Potager & Rosalind Creasy’s ‘Edible Flower Garden’
Rosalind Creasy’s The Edible Flower Garden
When you begin plotting out your spring vegetable garden, do you include space for edible flowers in your planting plan? Wait, did I just say edible flowers? Indeed I did. Gourmet gardeners will already be familiar with the delicious flavor of stuffed squash blossoms and the zing of spicy nasturtiums, but there are many, many more flavorful flowers to consider when drawing up your potager design. Looking for fresh inspiration while designing a long-time client’s 2018 vegetable plot, I pulled out Rosalind Creasy’s The Edible Flower Garden and found myself dreaming of candied flowers, lavender ice cream, rose petal syrup and beds filled with Johnny Jump-Ups, Violets, Begonias, Calendula and Hyssop. What great wintertime reading for a gardener, and a perfect Valentine’s Day gift for your favorite flower lover.
Image: Rosalind Creasy’s The Edible Flower Garden
Long time followers of this blog will recall many posts on potager design and edible gardens; including those featuring the use of herbs and flowers. The addition of flowers —especially edible buds and blossoms— to a vegetable garden is beneficial in so many ways. Not only do colorful flowers make an edible landscape more beautiful, they also provide sustenance to pollinators, beneficial insects, birds and yes, even the gardeners themselves. Designing a pretty potager is not only desirable, it also makes good gardening sense!
Nasturtium Tangle in My Own, Summertime Potager
When it comes to selecting seed for your spring planting, The Edible Flower Garden is filled with great information about flower flavors and textures as well as advice on how to grow and prepare your blossoms. From easy-to-cultivate annuals to long-lived perennials and investment shrubs, The Edible Flower Garden will help you decide what to grow.
Most Tuberous Begonias have a crisp texture and pleasantly light, lemony flavor. Image: Rosalind Creasy, The Edible Flower Garden
One of the best parts of this book, as well as others in Rosalind Creasy’s edible gardening series, is the recipe section. From simple sauces and salads to delicious-looking main courses and desserts, there’s something for everyone. Spring dreaming? May visions of Edible Flower Canapés and Rose Petal Sorbet dance in your head ’til springtime. Gather your seed packets and tubers, I’ll meet you in the garden come May!
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A copy of this book was provided by Tuttle Publishing in exchange for independent, un-biased review. No other compensation was received. The Gardener’s Eden is not an affiliate of Tuttle Publishing, but is an affiliate of Amazon.com.
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