Growing fruit and vegetables adds colour and food to your garden

Just because you're looking to inject colour into your outdoor spaces doesn't mean you have to plant a whole lot of pansies, petunias and camellias. Gardeners are increasingly growing vegetables and fruit-bearing plants in residential gardens to perform an ornamental function as well as to provide fresh, healthy food.

The Digger's Club sells seeds and plants by mail order to around 45,000 members and is a strong promoter of growing your own food for health, environmental and ornamental reasons. They have two huge gardens where they demonstrate planting methods and display plant breeds, and founder Clive Blazey says that around half of the flower gardens on these properties are planted out with vegetables.

"Growing vegetables and fruits provides such a fantastic therapeutic and decorative effect," he says. "Why plant something in your garden that is purely ornamental when you can have something just as beautiful - if not more so - that you can harvest and eat too?"

Clive points to cabbages (he describes them as "possibly the most beautiful vegetable there is") with all their different colours from red, blue or slate grey through to green. He recommends lettuces, and says there are 10 different colours you can use.

He also recommends artichokes - with a beautiful mauve-blue flower, they are an interesting-looking vegetable; Tuscan black kale, a black-leafed vegetable native to northern climes; climbing plants like beans and peas, with beautiful little flowers and bright-coloured pods; even carrots, with their green ferny foliage, leeks with their upright forms, and garlic and onions with tall stalks.

"The different shapes and foliage types provide contrast as well as colour," he says.

Growing fruit isn't often the hippest thing because fruit trees aren't always the most attractive of trees, sometimes with crooked, straggly branches, but some dwarf varieties can be laden with colourful fruit and are not overbearing in appearance. Tomatoes, as Clive puts it, are "very productive but not the most handsome of plants, apart from the bright red fruit."

He also suggests that anywhere you have azaleas you could replace them with blueberries and anywhere you have camellias you could replace them with avocados.

"They grow in exactly the same conditions," he says. "So instead of a hedge of camellias you could have a hedge of avocados, with lovely fruit available for 10 months of the year. You just need to know how to prune them to get the best out of them."

There are so many possibilities stemming from growing vegetables and your own fruit, it's almost enough to make your head swim. The best bet is to talk to a horticulturalist, gardener or nursery professional and find out how you can fill your garden with colour you can eat.