Separate No More: Flowers and Vegetables

We've been watching ornamentals and vegetables blur together for some time now, and I'm seeing more and more signs of it these days, from frontyard vegetable gardens serving as eye-catching ornamental displays, to the mixed planting of flowers and vegetables, to the fringe category of edible flowers.

Lately, everywhere I turn, something reminds me of the beauty of these categories melding together. (For one thing, I have some squash blossoms that I'm getting ready to pan fry.)

Then my sister sent me picture of her impressive garden that combines ornamentals and vegetables. She worked hard to find "companion plants" this year, and you can view the results HERE.

To help you out, The National Garden Bureau (NGB) recently listed resources for edible flowers in their newsletter. Check out:

* North Carolina State University's table of edible flowers HERE.

*Colorado State University's table on edibles and garden plants with toxic flowers HERE.

It never hurts to remind consumers that it's okay to integrate the food and the flowers (just as long as they watch out in terms of their pest control materials near the edibles). And with so many new gardeners testing the ground with vegetable gardening, it's the perfect way to help them transition to flowers, too.

Sustainable Sites: In Action
Here's a quick update on the Sustainable Site Initiative. You may recall that the Sustainable Sites Initiative developed a set of guidelines and benchmarks for what they're calling "sustainable sites," or landscaped environments. The goal, they hope, is to have a way to rate outdoor landscapes as sustainable, to coincide with the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification for buildings. Back in November, they published their guidelines, and beginning in June 2010, more than 150 pilot projects in 34 states began the process of applying those guidelines. These projects cover a diverse cross-section of sizes and geographic locations in various stages of development, from design to construction and maintenance. The guidelines include a four-star rating system, which works on a 250-point scale. Based on achieving all 15 of the prerequisites and at least 100 credit points, a pilot project will become Pilot Certified. Feedback from the pilot program will assist in revising the final rating system, which is slated for release in 2013.

You can now view all of the projects online, state by state, at: www.sustainablesites.org/pilot/.

Jennifer Duffield White
jwhite@ballpublishing.com