Five Malibu Edible Garden Design Ideas

Have you ever heard the expression, “living off the land?” While it’s easy to go to the supermarket and buy fruit and vegetables, there is nothing more convenient than picking greens from your own backyard. If you reside in a house, and have a front of backyard, why not plant edibles that you and your family can enjoy, and that will help you save money by not having to purchase these items at the grocery store? Busch Design Build, Inc. provides Malibu edible garden design ideas. Don’t have a green thumb? Don’t fret. This Malibu contractor can help you with your landscaping and making your garden green.

Malibu Edible Garden Design Ideas

1. Use the Front Yard – Many people simply don’t have the space in their backyards to set up an edible garden. Between patio furniture, BBQ grills, swing sets, etc., your yard may be too packed to add any fruit or vegetables to it. Why not utilize your front yard? Chances are, it is even more sunny that the backyard, and has tons of space that is only occupied by grass. And remember, you don’t have to plant huge tomato trees that will not look good in the front, you can make beautiful Malibu edible garden designs from strawberries, mint, or blueberry trees, which produce flowers on their shrubs. Or, you can plant edibles that blend in, and look like regular greenery, such as thyme, artichoke, sage and basil. Herbs are always pricey to buy at the store, and you usually need just a bit, so it would be very useful to have them growing right on your property.

2. Pick a Color Scheme – Why not spruce up your Malibu edible garden with a color scheme or two? You can outline a path with edibles of one or a few colors. Sunset magazine recommends outlining a pathway with rope, and then filling it with gravel. Then, picking a color. They picked purple, and outlined the pathway with sage, whose leaves are violet when starting to grow, and then turning into a deep eggplant; Japanese eggplant, which “produces lavender blossoms and glossy purple fruit on plants reaching 3 feet tall;” and Purple Ruffles basil, which grows to two feet tall and is in the purple family.

3. Plant Edible Flowers – There is nothing prettier to spruce up a yard than flowers. So when it comes to picking what to plant in your Malibu edible garden, why not start with edible flowers? They will not only look beautiful, but will be healthy and delicious on your dinner table. Organic Gardening recommends that you pick these flowers, which you can add to your salad: Nasturtium, whose leaves and flowers, which come in different colors, have a peppery flavor; Calendula, which is easy to grow a lot of; purple Violas; blue Borage, which tastes like cucumber; and herb flowers, like “basil, chives, dill, fennel, and arugula flowers all add a spark of aromatic flavor and a burst of color to salads.”

4. Go Small – While it would be great to have a gorgeous Malibu edible garden with orange, lemon, or even grapefruit trees, you don’t need the space for full size trees in order to grow edibles. Just plant shrubs or bushes, and still enjoy picking fruit right in your yard. Better Homes and Gardens states that many trees now come in miniature or dwarf sizes that can grow only up to five feet tall, and will even fit in a large pot. Blueberry and currant bushes are great to plant in your yard; they don’t give off a ton of fruit, so plant a few of them to get the best return. “Try growing short vining-type vegetables up trellises along the back of a flower border. Melons, cucumbers, and zucchini can all be trained to grow vertically; this means fewer fungal disease problems.”

5. Mix it Up – When picking what to plant in your Malibu edible garden, go wild and mix up fruits, vegetables and herbs with decorative flowers. Why not plant an upward growing tomato plant, with strawberries around it? Or a lemon tree bush with daisies surrounding it? And the best part, is that when you plant different varieties and kinds of greenery, this will reduce your pest problem, which usually thrives when you plant the same thing in large quantities in a space.

Busch Design Build, Inc., your local Malibu contractor, has been providing architectural and landscape design services for over twenty years. If you would like to learn more about our green landscape design services please contact us at your earliest convenience via phone or email. We also offer a wide range of other green services, including: Malibu Green Remodeling, Malibu Chemical Sensitivity Construction, Malibu EcoTech Build, Malibu pH build, and Malibu Eco Construction.

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Posted in Landscape