@jess_happy_smallholding: You may be surprised to hear that my favourite thing about my vegetable garden isn’t vegetables. It’s the ornamental beds! We have 36 raised beds in the vegetable garden and 12 ornamental beds so the ornamental parts of the garden take up 25%. A waste of space you say? Well…no! The ornamental beds bring so much to the veg garden both in terms of the way they look but also the wildlife they attract, which in turn help to make the garden more productive by pollinating our plants and keeping pest numbers down. Here’s why I love our our ornamental beds: 🌱 They look great all year round. Because they are mostly full of perennial plants they pop up early in the spring before the annual vegetables start to appear. In summer they provide rich colour and in winter they provide structure. 🌱 They are easy to maintain. No seed sowing required, they just keep coming back every year. 🌱 They are great for wildlife, providing pollen and nectar in the summer, seeds in autumn and winter and shelter for hibernating insects over winter. Here’s a list of all the plants we grow in our ornamental beds: calimagrostis Karl Foerster, Verbena Bonariensis, hornbeam (we will pleach these when they are bigger), stipa tenuissima, euryngium, cephelaria gigantia, salvia nemerosa, geranium rosanne, amelanchier, echinacea, agastache, veronica and I’m sure I’ve probably forgotten a few things! Do you grow ornamental plants in your veg garden? #gyo #smallholding #growyourownfood

Jess Gough

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Region: GB

Thursday 26 March 2026 06:51:06 GMT