Gardening

Vegetables can look every bit as beautiful as flowers in our gardens, working brilliantly in borders, containers, window boxes, scrambling up arches and even in hanging baskets. The problem with aesthetics arises when you start eating away at previously perfect groups of plants leaving gaps. But with the wide availability of “fast track” plants – mini vegetable plants in plugs – you can quickly fill in the gap or replant the container so you have visual continuity.

Even knowledgeable gardeners are surprised that vegetables of all shapes and sizes can be grown in containers – I think many grow better in this way. Celery, for example, is difficult to grow in my dry soil, but if I plant up three plants, in a pot just 30cm across, and stand it in a saucer of water, it can thrive with the increased moisture level. You can pick sticks from around the edge as you need them, allowing you to crop small quantities for several months in the summer.

Additionally, if you have club root in your soil, preventing you from growing brassicas, you can still grow them in containers. The mobility factor is useful too. If the summer is blisteringly hot, you can move your containers to a shadier spot.Colin Randel from seed company Thompson & Morgan believes most vegetables can thrive in a container, although he believes spinach, which even professional growers can have a problem with in the summer, might be more likely to bolt whilst in a container. He recommends growing Mikado, an oriental variety, instead.

When Thompson & Morgan are selecting varieties recommended for “patio/container” growing they select neater, more compact varieties, but I do not restrict myself to this – I have even grown giant sweetcorn in bucket-sized containers, and in a small space their towering proportions strangely make spaces appear bigger. Vegetables planted in borders, instead of bedding flowers, look striking. If you want to extend your palette beyond the usual handsome fodder of globe artichokes, coloured chards, sea kale, or climbing beans on tripods, most vegetables look good and perform well in groups among inedible border plants. Areas of cut-and-come-again lettuce, Russian kale, sweetcorn and courgettes would all fit the bill.