Plot 3 at Highbridge Community Farm has a new set of plants: edimentals. What are these? And why are we interested in growing them? Andrew Ross explains.
An edimental plant is a dual purpose plant: edible + ornamental. Some of them are short-lived perennials so they keep coming up year after year. We hope that growing edimentals might reduce the amount of labour that we need to grow a crop and, at the same time, increase the visual attractiveness of the plots.
It’s not just us showing interest in these plants. Garden designer Harry Holding created a whole show garden at Chelsea 20023 based around edimentals. He explains the concept like this: “Edimentals are in the sweet spot of plants that both look nice, are edible, and generally live for three years or longer (ie they are perennial). Traditional food growing is more of a seasonal annual cycle, but with edimentals, once you’ve planted it or sown seeds, they are resilient and have longevity.”
Getting started
We began the project in spring 2024 by planting several different species at the “Roman Road” end of Plot 3. The only one which was eaten by a number of Farm members last year was the purple-leaved tree spinach Chenopodium giganteum. We had high hopes for the Caucasian Spinach, Hablitsia tamnoides, but it was not able to cope with the bright sunlight and sadly, it died. We will try growing it again this year in more shade. It’s a great perennial leaf vegetable.
This year’s plants
We managed to collect seed from two single specimens of red flowered Love-lies-bleeding Amaranth varieties, Amaranthus caudatus and A. cruentos, that were grown in the plot last year as well as the seeds of several Tree Spinach plants. We’ve drift-sown these seeds in the edimental garden during March 2025. We have also already managed to plant a small area with seedlings of the Orache Atriplex hortensis, whose red leaves will work well cooked or make a great addition to a salad or cooked.
Four other plants survived last year’s winter: sea kale Crambe maritima, the cabbage thistle Cirsum oleraceum, Korean Celery Dystaenia takesimana and borage Borago officinalis. The borage died back but has returned this spring. The Korean Celery stood strong through the winter cold and should bush up this year.
This year, we’re also putting in new plants, including cuttings of a very old variety of kale called Taunton Dene and another whose thick straight stem earned it the name of Jersey Walking Stick Kale. We’ve sown seeds of the legume Pigeon peas Cajanus cajan and the Siberian pea tree Caragena arborescens and we are waiting to see if they come up.
We plan to try to grow some of our interesting onion varieties in pots before we plant them out because they were rather swamped by weeds last year. Perhaps the most exciting of these is the Sicilian honey garlic, Allium siculum, which has attractive, pendulous mauve flowers.
The plants shown clockwise from the top left:
- Love lies bleeding. Amaranthus caudatus
- Orache. Atriplex hortensis
- The Christmas tree like Caucasian Spinach, Hablitsia tamnoides growing at Acorn Bank (National Trust) near Penrith
- Tree Spinach Chenopodium giganteum
Find out more
The edimentals look good on Plot 3 but they also give us a chance to learn about growing different plants and to include plants in our food that we can’t buy commercially. If you’d like to know more about our edimentals, find Andrew Ross at the Farm – and do let us know what you think about this new growing venture.