Vegetables in the border

Add a few attractive vegetables to your flower border this year

- Nancy-Mary Goodall

IT is always fun to grow a few unexpected or unusual plants in the flower garden, and one way to do this is to try a few vegetables or plants closely related to them. Some vegetables are already accepted as border plants, such as the stately globe artichoke (Cynara scolymus), and the slightly smaller flowered cardoon, C. cardunculus, with its large acanthus-like leaves of a soft grey-green and purple thistle flowers in summer.

Another vegetable, which was used by Gertrude Jekyll at the front of her border, is the common kind of seakale (Crambe maritima), usually grown for forcing. It has wide, satiny, silver-blue leaves that are effective among softcoloured flowers. Its own flowers are white and can be cut off to keep the leaves at their best. Another seakale is the tall C. cordifolia, with clouds of white flowers in early summer – a fine plant for the back of a border.

Mountain spinach
A plant I have grown in the flower garden, which is equally useful in a border or in a sunny space among shrubs, is red mountain spinach or orach (Atriplex hortensis). It is a hardy annual that can be sown where it is to grow, with dark-red leaves with magenta undersides and stalks. It grows up to 4ft (1.2m) tall and should be placed well back where it strikes a useful colour note. In late summer it produces sprays of attractive seeds that are ideal for flower arrangements. There is also an ornamental red beet with dark-maroon leaves, sometimes seen in carpet bedding, but equally useful grown as a clump among flowers.