Scenes From A Vegetable Garden in October

The topic came up in conversation today: Edibles or vegetables and herbs in the purely decorative garden. I grow them to eat primarily, but like many plants they simply are beautiful to watch grow and I experienced firsthand just how eagerly the public embraced their beauty last year at Brooklyn Botanic's new herb garden, which features vegetables extensively. The garlic chive going to seed above and the leek below certainly strike me as easy on the eye.




































It's March now, so it's still a long way until we can admire and reap the reward of the simple leek grown to put in a soup like in the picture above or watch the seeds brown after harvesting basil like in the picture below, but right now we vegetable gardeners are sowing our seeds and dreaming of our future harvests.

Herbs and vegetables are not only useful but some of the prettiest plants I know and love to watch grow. (Of course I could be partial because they were my first love in the garden and I don't think I will ever quite get over them, but I can't think of a reason not to incorporate them into gardens where people are growing plants mostly for aesthetics.) Vegetable gardening is often a quite practical pursuit, but late last year I still couldn't get over the beauty of it all, even after most of the harvesting.