Garden Bed #4

The Native Edibles Garden:

This bed allows viewers to see a few of the wide range of native plants of southern Oregon that bear edible fruit, leaves, or bulbs, and can be attractive additions to a Fire-wise landscape. This garden bed also includes rain collecting swales, berms built using rotting logs covered in soil (hugelkultur mounds) and 2 or 3 mossy logs.

Hazelnut-EdiblesBed
Hazelnut and creeping Oregon Grape with Serviceberry and Elderberry at the other end

Instead of going foraging in the wild you can grow your own native edibles and in the process create a fire-resistant, drought tolerant, and beautiful native landscape. Many of these plants also support native pollinators and butterflies so you won’t just be growing food for yourself! How cool is that?….

The plants grown in this garden are all native to Southern Oregon. They were chosen not just for their Fire-resistance, but for their beauty in a landscape. Many not only bear edible fruit but are evergreen as well, so they will look as good in the winter landscape as in the summer. So by choosing these plants for your landscape you are choosing plants well adapted to our climate and capable of surviving without ANY care from us. In addition, you get the bonus of food that was once an important part of the diet of the indigenous people of this area.

If you do choose to plant natives you need to realize that it will take them a couple years to get roots well established so give them regular summer water until then. After that you will keep them looking especially good if you water them a few times through the dry season, but you can know that if necessary they are capable of surviving with little summer water.

NativeEdiblesGarden
Kinnickinnick, red-flowering Currant, and Salal in Native Edibles garden

Plants in this bed:

Tree Layer:

Hazelnut – Attractive small multi-trunked deciduous tree bearing delicious nuts in late summer.

Serviceberry – Small deciduous tree with berries used for pies and jam. Good fall color.

Elderberry – Small deciduous tree with berries used for tonic, wine and jelly

Shrub layer:

Red Flowering Currant – beautiful tall red flowered deciduous shrub with tart tasty berries

Evergreen Huckleberry – lovely evergreen shrub with tasty berries

Groundcovers:

Creeping Oregon Grape – evergreen with edible berry

Salal – evergreen with edible berry

Blue Camas Lily – summer dormant with edible bulb

Redwood Sorrel – edible leaves

Wild Ginger – evergreen groundcover that is used with caution as a tea

Kinnickinnick – (Bearberry) Evergreen groundcover with leaves that traditionally are used medicinally, most commonly for urinary tract infection.

NativeEdibles-Elderberry
Native Blue Elderberry – will get 10′-12′ or more tall, with lovely big white flower clumps and then blue berries to make wine or jam or tonic.

Features in this bed include:

Swale and river rock for rain garden effect

Hugelkulture mounds (rotting logs and debris buried under soil and compost and planted)

Rotting logs for the microorganisms and natural nutrients they add to the soil and plant environment.