Grow Food Outside the Veggie Patch: Edimentals with Harry Holding

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Food plants are usually assigned to the vegetable patch, while ornamental borders are expected to sit there and look respectable. Garden designer Harry Holding sees no good reason for such strict garden zoning.

Harry is the author of Eat Your Garden: Edimentals as a Beautiful, Low-Effort Way to Grow Food. Edimentals are plants that are both edible and ornamental, allowing us to grow food throughout a garden without giving up colour, texture, structure, or beauty. Harry is the founder of Harry Holding Studio, and his School Food Matters Garden at the 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show received a Silver-Gilt medal and the People’s Choice Award. 

In this conversation, Harry explains how edible plants can create a foraging or grazing experience right outside the door. We talk about designing in layers, using constraints to make plant choices easier, and creating ecologically rich plant communities that cover the soil and leave less room for weeds.

Harry also shares ideas for small gardens, courtyards, balconies, and containers. His approach is to imagine the space planted first, then carve out the paths, seating areas, morning-coffee spots, and evening gin-and-tonic headquarters.

We talk about:

• What an edimental plant is 
• Why food can be a gateway to connecting with nature 
• Combining edible plants with ornamental garden design 
• Structural plants, seasonal highlights, and ground-cover layers 
• Using colour, texture, height, and growing conditions as useful constraints 
• Designing abundant edible gardens in small spaces 
• Why annual vegetables sometimes struggle in established perennial plantings 
• Questioning gardening rules and learning through experiments 
• How to begin adding edimentals to an existing garden 

Harry also talks about some fascinating edible ornamentals, including Saskatoon berries, sea kale, sochan, king’s spear, Korean aster, citron daylily, lamb’s ear, hostas, chives, and bladder campion.

His parting advice is simple: make a little room, try unfamiliar plants, and grow what brings you joy. A garden should not become another stern supervisor. It should be a place that makes your heart sing.