Edimentals: The Ornamental Edibles Worth a Spot in Your Border

A handful of edible plants earn a place in a decorative border on design merit alone: globe artichoke and cardoon for silver architecture, rainbow chard for ground-level colour, scarlet runner beans for flowers at height, and currant bushes for blossom, fruit and woody structure. They are called edimentals, edible plants chosen for their looks first and their harvest second, and you plant them exactly where you would put an ornamental perennial, climber or shrub. In a Scottish garden, where tall structure and long seasonal interest work hard against grey skies and a short growing window, they can be the stronger design choice, not a compromise.

The idea has had a moment at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, where "edimentals are all the rage" was the verdict in 2026, but it isn't new. Garden Organic's Ryton Gardens has run a large vegetable garden alongside a separate ornamental garden for years, treating the two as parts of one working demonstration space.

What makes an edible plant ornamental enough

The term "edimentals" is credited to Stephen Barstow, a British permaculturist who moved from Scotland to Norway and has spent decades trialling edible plants for cool climates. Height and habit, flower or foliage colour, texture and a defined season of interest are the terms any ornamental perennial or shrub is judged on, and an edimental has to earn its place by the same measure. A longer list of interesting edibles, such as purple sprouting broccoli, red Brussels sprouts and purple-podded peas, doesn't hold up against that test: an unusual pod colour or leaf flush isn't the same as real ornamental value. The plants below have a real architectural silhouette, a real flower or a real foliage colour range.

Architectural structure: globe artichoke and cardoon

Globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus Scolymus Group) is a large, architectural perennial reaching 1.5 to 2.5m tall and 1 to 1.5m wide, built around big, silvery grey-green leaves and thistle-like purple flowerheads in summer and autumn. It is ornamental enough for the flower garden. That combination of height, silver foliage and a strong flower is rare among edible plants and does real work in a Scottish border: it holds vertical structure and textural contrast against a grey sky for months, well past the point most spring perennials have gone over.

Use it as a back-of-border anchor or a single specimen where you would otherwise place a large ornamental thistle. The silver-grey foliage pairs with blue and purple flowering perennials (salvias, catmint, alliums) and with other silver foliage, and the purple flowerheads read well against dark-leaved neighbours. It carries the RHS pollinator badge, so leaving a flowerhead or two to open rather than harvesting every bud has a real wildlife upside. It needs full sun, fertile, well-drained soil and shelter. It is rated H5The RHS's H1a–H7 scale for how much cold a plant can survive outdoors, H1a being tender indoor-only and H7 hardy anywhere in the UK. Full definition →, hardy in most places in the UK even in severe winters, but in colder, more exposed or wetter Scottish gardens it can be short-lived, so plan it as a strong but not unshakeable structural presence rather than permanent architecture. Don't build a scheme's whole back-of-border height around a single artichoke: plant it alongside another tall element that can carry the height if you lose it in a bad winter. A large container is also a legitimate border element where open ground is too exposed or too poorly drained. Sowing, spacing, feeding and winter protection are in the growing guide.

For more drama, cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) is the artichoke's close relative: a robust clump-forming perennial, also 1.5 to 2.5m tall, with silvery-grey, dividedPropagating a clump-forming perennial by digging it up and splitting it into several smaller pieces, each with roots and shoots attached. Full definition →, spiny leaves up to a metre long and the same large purple thistle-like flowers. It holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit and the pollinator badge, and is arguably the most dramatic architectural edible available. It prefers a sheltered spot, and needs a mulchA layer of material spread over the soil around plants to suppress weeds, retain moisture, and improve soil structure as it breaks down. Full definition → and protection from strong winds during very cold winters. Its needs are close enough to globe artichoke's that the artichoke growing guide is a reasonable starting point.

Colour: ruby and rainbow chard

Chard's ornamental case barely needs building. Rainbow chard is named outright as an edimental example, bred to be pretty. The trait behind that is stem colour: Beta vulgaris 'Bright Lights' has stems in red, yellow and orange shades on a compact, clump-forming plant of 0.1 to 0.5m. That is a real range of hot colour at ground-to-knee height, the sort a grey Scottish border benefits from where bedding annuals usually do the work. It is rated H3, hardy in coastal and relatively mild parts of the UK, and grows in full sun to partial shade in moist but well-drained soil.

Use chard as a front-of-border colour block rather than a single specimen, because the stem colour reads best in a mass. It pairs with other hot-colour or dark-foliage planting (heucheras, dark-leaved dahlias, orange and red crocosmia) and works as a repeating rhythm along a border edge, doing the same visual job as coloured-stem cornus in winter, but through the growing season. Its limit is height: it stays low, so it is a foreground or edging plant, not a filler for mid-border gaps. Sowing succession and cutting technique are in the chard growing guide.

At Chelsea 2026, parsnip's "stunning, acid-green" flowerheads and the broad bean 'Crimson-Flowered' were also flagged as edimental exhibits. Their height, colour and structure aren't pinned down as they are for the four plants here, so treat them as ones to watch rather than ones to build a border around yet.

Climbers: scarlet runner bean

Scarlet runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus) is the strongest case of the four. It is a green-leaved twining climber reaching 2.5 to 4m, with scarlet flowers (occasionally white) that develop into long, flat pods over an extended summer season, and it carries the RHS pollinator badge. That is long-lasting colour at height, which a short Scottish summer makes valuable, and it does the full job of an ornamental annual climber while also cropping. It is grown as a summer annual in the UK because it can't survive freezing.

Grow it on the support you would otherwise dedicate to a purely ornamental climber: a wigwam, an obelisk or a wall-trained frame. As a twining climber it needs a support to perform at all; without one it collapses into a low tangle. The scarlet flower anchors a hot planting scheme on its own, or can run against cooler foliage (dark-leaved cannas, bronze fennel) for contrast. At up to 4m it catches more wind than its slender canes suggest, so give it a firm, well-anchored support to keep the display upright. Its twining habit and high flower output make it one of the few edible plants that can stand in for a decorative annual climber like sweet pea in a cottage-garden scheme. Sowing timing, supports and pinching outRemoving the soft growing tip of a stem to stop upward growth and make the plant branch out sideways instead. Full definition → are in the runner bean growing guide.

Woody structure and blossom: currant bushes

Currant bushes bring permanent woody structure, which none of the others do. Common redcurrant (Ribes rubrum) is a deciduous shrub of 1.5 to 2.5m, hardy throughout the UK (H6), with small greenish-yellow flowers followed by hanging clusters of shining red berries, and the RHS pollinator badge. That is a three-season shrub across the window a Scottish garden most needs filled: spring blossom, summer fruit clusters hanging like jewellery against the foliage, and a deciduous woody frame carrying the border the rest of the year.

Use currants as a border shrub layer rather than confining them to a fruit cage. A redcurrant, blackcurrant or whitecurrant reads like any other flowering-then-fruiting deciduous shrub of similar size, and the hanging berry clusters are showier at close range than most ornamental shrub fruit. In a border the blossom and fruiting habit don't depend on being caged and the bush crops as it would anywhere; birds simply get easier access to the fruit than they would behind netting, a trade-off plenty of gardeners make deliberately. Position the bush where the blossom and berries stay visible rather than lost among surrounding foliage, on a shrub border edge or in the mid-height layer of a mixed border. For pruning, feeding and harvest timing see the redcurrant growing guide (it covers whitecurrant too); blackcurrant has its own growing guide.

Putting them together

A single scheme can use all five without any fighting for the same job: cardoon or globe artichoke anchoring the back of a bed, rainbow chard massed along the front edge, a runner bean wigwam rising through the middle distance where a sweet pea frame would otherwise go, and a currant bush marking a border corner where its blossom and summer fruit carry the eye once the perennials in front have gone over. Currant blossom opens first in spring, chard's stem colour builds through the growing season, and artichoke, cardoon and runner bean carry the display through summer into autumn, so between them they cover the full height range of a mixed border and most of the year. Deep winter, with currant down to bare wood and the others cut back, is the stretch none of them covers. That is a job for evergreen structure or berrying shrubs planted alongside them.

Common questions

Sources