You may have noticed people on the streets of Delaware holding PDAs and measuring street trees. The data collection is being done by the Delaware County Master Gardener Volunteers as part of a project to inventory all the street trees in the City of Delaware.
Vegetable gardens are commonplace in suburbia; however, edible landscaping is a relatively new trend. What’s the difference? Instead of planting vegetables in neat rows, the recent trend is to use edibles in landscape design by intermingling them with ornamentals and even using edibles as ornamentals. The practice of edible landscaping is not new, as it dates back to the ancient Egyptians and was also used in the medieval monasteries by the monks in designing their gardens. The recent rise in the popularity of edible landscaping began in the early 1980s and is credited, by many, to Rosalind Creasy. She is the author of several popular books on the subject.
A raised bed garden by definition is simply one that is elevated off the ground. The bed can be solid to the ground and constructed with sides made of wood, brick, or other materials. The bed can simply be a berm with no permanent edges. Or, the bed can be completely elevated off the ground so that a chair can be placed under it. How you design your raised bed garden depends on your available resources, where you are putting it, and how you intend to use it.
Tomatoes are probably the most popular “vegetable” grown in the home garden; however, this hasn’t always been true. While researchers have traced the tomato’s origin to the mountains of South America, the plant was introduced and grown in Europe more than 200 years before being grown in the United States.