Top tip
When planting edible flowers, make sure they cannot be confused with any non-edible flowers. This is especially important when the garden is for children.
Growing our own fruit, vegetables and herbs provides the perfect opportunity for us to enjoy the sensory experience of taste in our gardens.
- Enjoying the garden at a sensory level can have positive effects on your wellbeing - it may make you feel happier, calmer, or more connected to the space around you
- Tending edible plants can offer motivation to get out into the garden and engage our nurturing instincts
- The opportunity to connect with others, through sharing growing tips and challenges, or passing on produce if you more than you can use
A garden full of vegetables and flowers
Since medieval times gardeners have engaged all of our five senses: touch, sound, sight, smell and taste by growing vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs side by side. An excellent example of this is the French kitchen garden or potager. These gardens also provide a safe haven for local fauna to feel at home in, including birds, insects and reptiles.
I like to grow vegetables which I can enjoy fresh during the summer and have some left over to freeze or give to friends and family. Taste is a very important sense to me.
Jean, blind and deaf gardener
Even if space is limited, you can still create a garden that tastes as good as it looks. Many varieties of fruit, vegetables, and herbs can be grown in small outdoor areas or in pots, hanging baskets, leftover containers or on windowsills. There are even plants that can be grown without soil, such as cress or pea shoots.
A chilli plant with red chillies
Growing fruit and vegetables does more than just stimulate our sense of taste. Many of these plants attract wildlife to the garden, thanks to their blossom or enticing crops.
When deciding which fruit and vegetables to grow, it's always a good idea to choose what you enjoy eating. Crops that are expensive to buy in the shops or are easy to grow are also good choices.
You can grow food crops from seed. Or, you can buy them already grown a bit further and ready to plant.
These food plants tend to grow well and, depending on variety, don’t take up much space:
- Runner beans
- Broad beans
- French beans
- Peas
- Strawberries
- Tomatoes
- Peppers
- Chillies
Depending on your growing space, some plants may be better than others.
If you are growing in containers, dwarf varieties are a good choice. If you have spare vertical spaces - such as walls and fences - climbing plants can make good use of them. Consider growing plants such as beetroot, chives, shallots or herbs to make the most of soil space and to add colour and texture.
Many salad leaves, such as lettuce and rocket, are expensive to buy in the supermarket. They also lose their taste through being packed and left on a supermarket shelf. Salad plants are fairly easy to grow and take up very little space.
Hands holding soil
You can inspire children to learn about the food they eat. You could give them a corner of the garden to call their own. Here, they could grow fruit and vegetables in various ways, from direct in the ground to using pots and containers. Make sure any containers have drainage holes and are big enough for the plants to grow.
Encourage children to sow seeds of easy-to-grow plants such as lettuce, radish, peas and beans, or plant strawberry runners in containers or baskets.
Tending young plants as they grow, then harvesting and eating the food, is a great way of engaging children’s sense of taste in the garden.
Honeysuckle flower
Herbs and some flowering plants are particularly significant as they are multi-sensory. A mix of aromatic, flavoursome fresh herbs provides scent as well as giving flavour and texture to any meal.
Common culinary herbs
These commonly used culinary herbs can be grown in traditional herb or vegetable gardens, in raised beds, containers or mixed borders:
- Popular annuals (last for one year only): Basil, coriander and dill
- Biennials (lasts for two growing seasons): Caraway, chervil and parsley
- Perennials (lasts for several years): Borage, chives, fennel, marjoram, mint, sage, tarragon and thyme
Most herbs originate from the Mediterranean and need somewhere sunny to grow best.
Edible flowers
You might also like to grow edible flowers for a variety of textures and tastes:
- Cornflower: A sweet-to-spicy clove-like flavour.
- Hibiscus: Great addition to fruit salads or to make a citrus-flavoured tea.
- Honeysuckle: Enjoy the nectar fresh, or use petals to make a syrup, pudding, or a tea.
- Nasturtium: Tasting peppery, like watercress, these make a lovely salad addition.
- Pansy: Mild and fresh-tasting, they are great in a green salad or as a garnish.
- Rose: Lovely in drinks, fruit dishes, jams, and jellies, thanks to its delicate fragrance.
- Borage – Tastes like cucumber. Flowers can be used as a garnish and the leaves are good in salads, yoghurt or cream cheese mixtures or served with shellfish.
You could use these to make edible flower ice cubes!
As well as being great for taste, some herbs make useful companion plants:
- Oregano: An excellent companion to all vegetables, especially those most often targeted by sap-sucking insects like aphids. Plant near peppers, aubergines, beans, cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and turnips, as well as strawberries
- Chives: Believed to repel aphids, beetles, slugs, and carrot flies. Plant with tomatoes, carrots and sunflowers
- Thyme: Plant near cabbage and other brassicas, as well as strawberries. Deters whiteflies and cabbage maggots
- Basil: Thought to repel whiteflies, mosquitoes, spider mites and aphids. Good companion plant to tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce
- Sage: Deters cabbage moth and carrot fly. Plant near lettuce and beans
- Parsley: Plant near carrots, chives, asparagus and tomatoes. It attracts beneficial insects such as parasitic wasps, ladybugs and damselflies
- Mint: Plant near tomatoes, brassicas and peas. Deters white cabbage moths and aphids
We probably think of summer and autumn as the bumper harvest seasons. But, a garden can be designed to appeal to our sense of taste all year round.
The brassica family – chard, kale, cabbage, turnips, broccoli, cauliflower, purple sprouting and brussels sprouts - can be grown and harvested over the winter months. Root vegetables such as carrots and beetroot can be harvested in late autumn and stored carefully for several months.
Perennial herbs like bay, rosemary, sage and thyme are hardy enough to survive the winter. They may need protection against the harshest weather.
If you have a sunny windowsill in your kitchen, you can, with the right care, grow annual herbs such as parsley, basil and thyme throughout the year.
Related content
Planning a sensory garden
Sensory gardens include features, objects and plants that appeal to our senses. They can be calming or stimulating, with a range of potential wellbeing benefits.
