If you want a garden that looks great, feeds you and requires less upkeep, edimentals — edible ornamentals — provide just what you’re looking for. Joining me to discuss the benefits of these perennials that pull double-duty is garden designer Harry Holding, the author of “Eat Your Garden.”
Harry’s design portfolio includes private gardens, public landscapes and international commissions. Since founding Harry Holding Studio, based in London and Bristol, in 2016, he has been named among House & Garden’s Top 50 Garden & Landscape Designers and received many accolades from the Royal Horticultural Society, the Society of Garden & Landscape Designers and other industry groups. He is a tutor at the London College of Garden Design and a sought-after guest speaker on ecological design.
Garden designer Harry Holding is the author of the new book “Eat Your Garden: Edimentals as a Beautiful, Low-Effort Way to Grow Food.” Photo Credit: Clive Nichols
“We love perennial foods when they’re fennel, asparagus, artichoke, herbs,” Harry says. “We know them. We love them. So just expand that thinking to some of the other slightly less well-known perennials, and I think that will be a really good start on your edimental journey.”
Harry will have a show garden at the Chelsea Flower Show from May 19–23 at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London. I will be visiting the flower show, and I look forward to meeting Harry in person there.
Meet Harry Holding
Harry’s grandparents on both sides of his family introduced him to gardening. His father’s parents lived on the outskirts of London with a large suburban garden that was their pride and joy, full of ornamental plants. His mother’s mother was all about self-sufficiency and turned her whole garden over to a growing zone for food.
The beauty of having those two contrasting experiences has been very formative for Harry. “I just had it in my blood in every aspect of me,” he says.
To keep his car fueled, Harry gardened, landscaped and worked at garden centers and nurseries. He went on to study business at the University of Nottingham, planning to set up his own gardening business. That led him to Australia, and back to the U.K., working for various designers, nurseries and contractors before setting up his own design studio a decade ago.
After winning a scholarship, Harry studied at the London College of Garden Design at Kew Gardens.
Harry’s design was the People’s Choice Award winner at the 2023 Chelsea Flower Show. Project Giving Back, which has funded 62 show gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show in the name of charities, gave Harry the opportunity to create a show garden to raise funds for School Food Matters, which pushed for equality in food, education and nature connection for children.
“ So inevitably, the garden needed to be edible, and that’s a huge passion of mine and always has been a key interest,” Harry says.
He says the twist was that the Chelsea Flower Show is a place for design, so a perennial garden felt most appropriate for a show garden: the color, the layering, the interest and the beautiful abundance that can be created within a space aligned perfectly with the goals of the charity and of the show garden.
“We went with a group of plants called ‘edimentals’ — edible ornamental plants — and they’re just a fantastic umbrella term, really, for such a wide diversity of plants, which really just created this incredible garden. For me, the sort of beautiful thing about a show garden is that you do it because you love it, you’re passionate about the cause, and it gives you an opportunity to deep dive into quite unique areas of design and horticulture.
“ But really what came out of that space and that whole project was really the appreciation that this is something the public are really interested in and have an appetite to learn more about,” Harry says.
In 2024, the RHS invited Harry to design its feature garden, “The RHS No Adults Allowed Garden.”
The 2023 School Food Matters garden by Harry Holding.
Photo Credit: Britt Willoughby Dyer
Edimentals’ Origin
Stephen Barstow, the author of “Around The World in 80 Plants: An Edible Perennial Vegetable Adventure for Temperate Climates,” coined the term “edimentals” in 2008.
“ Those are plants that really earn their place for their beauty, but also for the fact that they are delicious and they can span so many different uses and applications, and you probably have a whole bunch of them growing in your garden already,” Harry says.
Harry’s 2026 Chelsea Flower Show Garden
”This year at Chelsea Flower Show we’re working with the Eden Project, which is an incredible charity and organization in the U.K. and really iconically known for their sort of bold, biome structures that they created on their first site down in Cornwall, which was an old quarry, and they just turned it into this absolute oasis with inside tropical rainforests and a Mediterranean biome,” Harry says.
Over more than 25 years, the Eden Project has evolved into an organization that supports environmental work and nature connection in communities around the world, he explains.
“Ultimately, we’re launching the new Eden Project, which is going to be up in Morecambe in the north of the U.K., right on the coast, so a very different climate and environment. And what the U.K. and particularly Morecambe really needs is a focus on developing and building skills in young adults in horticulture, and also other skills like foraging and crafts, and the garden is going to be embodying that.”
Harry says it’s an exciting project with an amazing organization, and there will be plenty of edimentals worked into the garden. He says it will be fun to find edible, resilient plants that “thrive and survive on those tough coastal conditions but also are going to give you something, that next step beyond just being beautiful.”
What Prompted Harry to Write ‘Eat Your Garden’
Harry set out to synthesize information from experts in lots of different fields, and put it in a book that is more than just lists of plants and why the plants are useful and important. He wanted to bring his contribution and voice to the story in terms of how to design with these plants. He didn’t want to bog people down with overly detailed or complex theory, but rather he sought to engage a wide audience with accessible design processes and thinking.
Harry presents combinations of plantings for different scenarios, “whether you have a pot, a balcony, a courtyard or sprawling estate with acres and acres or a homestead.”
“Different scales need different theory,” he explains.
“ What I also look to do in my book is to empower people with that understanding of basic ecology and how to design in line with nature,” he adds.
Harry Holding’s allotment.
Photo Courtesy of Harry Holding
Hiding Food
Growing edimentals can skirt restrictive HOA bylaws that prohibit growing food on your property. It is also a good solution for city dwellers who want to grow food but don’t have much space.
“ An edimental approach is really a fantastic way of bringing food into your life, because you’re creating a foraging experience in your own home,” Harry says. “ And whilst it’s not going to be producing as much food as if you gave your entire garden up to growing annuals. Even if you were just growing on a balcony and you had one salad from an edimental combination of plants in one year, that would be the best salad you had all year, and it would change your perception of food.”
Edimental by Accident
Many ornamental gardens already contain edimentals, whether the gardeners know it or not. Lamb’s ear, ostrich fern, hostas and daylilies are all edible.
Harry says day lilies are some of his favorite edimentals. And asparagus fronds can be enjoyed just like asparagus.
“It’s a bit of lemon, a bit of olive oil, and you can’t go wrong really, can you?” he says.
King’s spear (Asphodeline lutea) is a beautiful plant and the most asked about plant in Harry’s 2023 Chelsea Flower Show garden, he says. “It was prized by the ancient Greeks, was a wonderful edible back in the day, and delicious nutty roots to them, wonderful when the shoots are coming up, very fresh, delicious, and really beautiful flowers that are wonderful for a garnish as well.”
Strawberries on a garden path.
Photo Credit: Alister Thorpe
Why Perennials?
“Edimentals by definition are typically perennial, and they, for me, just achieve a balance which I’ve always struggled to achieve as an annual grower,” Harry says. “I find that whilst I love growing annuals, as we all have very busy lives — and running a business and traveling a lot with my work — it is quite a struggle. So having a perennial system, once you establish it, it really just gives and gives and gives with very little input.”
Harry says that while annuals are unrivaled in terms of yield and often have wonderful flavors, perennials can give you diversity and a lower-effort, lower-maintenance way of bringing food into your life.
“Beyond that, we’re all feeling the impacts of climate change around the world in many different ways,” he says. “In the U.K., we’re getting very wet winters and very hot and dry summers often. And we’re struggling to kind of grow in the same way that we used to and requiring more and more resources. So perennials, once they have those roots down, really have much more of inbuilt drought tolerance to them.”
At his garden design business, many clients love the idea of having food incorporated into their gardens, but they weren’t always so enthusiastic. “Clients were sort of quite hesitant and nervous about having food despite it being something that they knew would enrich their lives,” he says.
Because garden space is at such a premium in the U.K. — “We’re a lot of people on a small island” — giving up space to grow food is not always appealing,
“By being able to have that cake and eat it too with beautiful plants that are edible, that’s just really been a huge thing that our clients have sort of tapped into,” Harry says.
At the same time, clients often ask for “low maintenance,” and that is something that edimentals also deliver.
“Whilst some of us love being out in the garden, it seems to be a theme that people don’t have that much time for it, myself included,” Harry says. So creating something that ultimately can produce food without a huge amount of input, again, just ticks that box.”
The 2023 School Food Matters garden by Harry Holding. Photo Credit: Clive Nichols
Harmony with Wildlife
“Many of us, most of us I’d argue, are craving nature connection,” Harry says. “And that’s such an important piece of what we all do is create these beautiful spaces that are harmonious for us and wildlife. And by bringing food into that equation, food is a wonderful gateway to nature connection, and it’s also something that is a common leveler across all of society. We have that across cultures, generations, and I think the more we can unify people and the more we can bring ourselves closer to nature through that foraging experience, through that food experience in our own homes, then the better the world will be for it.”
Edimental Gardening Takes Some of the Work Out of Food Growing
Adding edimentals to a garden takes the pressure off for somebody who wants a traditional food garden but struggles to find the time to make it work. Incorporating food-producing plants into the rest of the landscape as feature plants or blending them in is a worthy, low-risk experiment for any gardener and can lead to foraging opportunities.
The key thing with all of this, both in the garden and in the kitchen, is to be experimental, Harry advises. Have faith in yourself, and laugh when things go wrong.
“Try and bring someone into that journey with you because, you know, not everything is going to be perfect,” he says.
So many plants fall under the edimentals category, including leafy plants for brewing herbal tea. So it’s easy to get started.
A Saint Werburghs garden in Bristol. Photo Courtesy of Harry Holding
If you haven’t listened to my conversation with Harry Holding on edimentals, you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
What edimentals do you grow? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Episode 079: Foodscaping: How to Create an Edible Landscape, With Brie Arthur
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Organic Vegetable Gardening: My new premium online course. The course is designed to be a comprehensive guide to starting, growing, nurturing and harvesting your favorite vegetables, no matter what you love to eat, no matter where you live, no matter your level of gardening experience.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
Growing a Greener World Episode 216: Edible Landscaping
Harry Holding on Instagram | @harryholdingstudio
“Eat Your Garden: Edimentals as a Beautiful, Low-Effort Way to Grow Food” by Harry Holding
“Around The World in 80 Plants: An Edible Perennial Vegetable Adventure for Temperate Climates” by Stephen Barstow
“Edible Flower Garden” by Rosalind Creasy
“Edible Landscaping: Now You Can Have Your Gorgeous Garden and Eat It Too!” by Rosalind Creasy
“The Foodscape Revolution: Finding a Better Way to Make Space for Food and Beauty in Your Garden” by Brie Arthur
“Gardening with Grains: Bring the Versatile Beauty of Grains to Your Edible Landscape” by Brie Arthur
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Dramm – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Milorganite® – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
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