Ornamental Vegetable Garden Plants and Ideas, How to Design a Beautiful Vegetable Garden

The best tips for creating an ornamental vegetable garden at home. Learn which vegetable plants offer exceptional beauty in the garden. Growing colorful lettuce, chard, peppers, eggplant and tomatoes will add beauty to your vegetable garden.

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The Beautiful and Practical Vegetable Garden

An ornamental vegetable garden is primarily recognized for showing the beauty of plants rather than their practical uses. These types of gardens can show a gardener's skill, success, and passion in vegetable gardening. A bonus to top it off is besides making beautiful borders for the landscape is the vegetables are also edible!

Ornamental Lettuce Varieties

Leafy vegetables grown in an ornamental garden offer a vast array of colors. For instance, lettuce not only comes in a wide variety of green shades, but also in garnet and bronze. Red Fire or Red Sails are examples of loose leaf varieties with leaves that are partially reddish bronze and part green.

Cimmaron and Freckles Lettuce for Bronze and Burgundy

Cimmaron lettuce is a bronze colored romaine that was grown back in the 18th century. Another prime example for an attractive plant to grow along with typical green romaine is Freckles, a romaine variety with blotches and burgundy spots. Besides being pretty as a picture, Freckles is one of the best flavored lettuce varieties and stays put for an extended time before bolting.

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Galactic Lettuce in Hues of Burgundy

is an impressive lettuce grown for its dark burgundy color. The leaf edges are curly and it resists bolting for an extended period. You can use this lettuce in a container ornamental vegetable garden or as an edging plant.

Rainbow Chard--Feast of Colors

Ruby Swiss chard, and the newer mix, Bright Lights are a must for a decorative ornamental vegetable garden. The leaf veins and stem of the Bright Lights variety come in vivid orange, yellow, red, purplish red and shocking pink. This type grows tall making a picturesque backdrop for shorter plants. Besides the intense coloring of Swiss chard, the stems and large leaves, which are similar to spinach is cooked and enjoyed as a tasty vegetable.

Pepper Plants Offer Red, Orange, Purple, Yellow and Green

Another colorful selection for your ornamental vegetable garden is peppers. There are pepper plants comprising of a rainbow of eye pleasing colors to delight the taste buds as well. Black Pearl is a vegetable gardening fan favorite. The small, round produce of this tall, sturdy plant is nearly solid purple/black and pack quite a punch on the hotness scale when eaten. Plant the colorful selection named Islander if you want to grow peppers without the heat. All bell peppers eventually ripen to a bright yellow, red, or orange, although they remain sweet green for an extended time.

Ornamental Eggplant Varieties

Sungold Orange Cherry Tomatoes

No ornamental garden is complete without a wonderful orange cherry tomato type with a fruity flavor. Tomatoes come in very interesting choices that cover the spectrum from white, yellow, purple, green, striped, black, and of course red! I do not know any gardener who would grow tomatoes as ornamentals only but I am sure there may be a few who do!

Growing Beans for a Splash of Purple and Yellow

Purple and yellow "green" beans provide a splash of color in an ornamental vegetable garden plot. The eye popping colors make it easier to pick out the produce at harvest time.

Red Cabbage, Orange and Purple Cauliflower, Purple Broccoli Add to the Fun

Other vegetables that offer diverse color from its "normal" relatives include red cabbage, orange or purple cauliflower, and purple broccoli. (Maybe you can get the kids to eat their broccoli disguised in purple!) There is no shortage of extraordinary vegetables to add a spectacular view to your ornamental vegetable garden that are much too pretty to eat!

Ornamental Herbs add Beauty to the Garden

There are many plants that can be grown both as ornamentals and for medicinal purposes such as lavender. The fragrant plant has pale bluish-purple flowers that grow in clusters.

Lavender can be used for making essential oil, perfume, and dried flower arrangements.

Planting an ornamental vegetable garden adds brilliant color to the garden and to culinary dishes. One of the best reasons for growing ornamentals is that children are more apt to help with the harvest and eat unusually colored vegetables! This is a great way to get your kids involved in vegetable gardening. Another benefit of this kind of garden is that scientists have discovered that the colorful pigments responsible for the outstanding colors of the plants contain antioxidants that protect us from diseases.

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