There are so many gorgeous veggies!

Why not try veggies in colors, you can use the foliage for an accent plant.

I grew a lime green and a dark reddish purple leaf amaranth this year. I need to seed more out, they are nice in salad.

"Red Sea" is from AgroHaitai
"Edible Amaranth: Tender Leaf" is from Evergreen seeds

In the early spring (I'm not sure what zone you are in, so adjust your planting time accordingly) I planted green and purple Kohlrabi - they are cool and outer space looking! I pulled these then planted tomatoes.

Lettuces. In shady areas I grow lettuce all year round, the rest of the year I grow a tapestry of green, speckled, golden or red/purple lettuces. They are beautiful and I like to create patterns with them (although I just use the vegetable bed)

Purple or speckled "opal" basils. African is also really nice, it has lovely flowers and a terrific scent

Yard Long Beans: if you have an arch, you can grow some interesting things right up and over it! I just use the cheap ones from big lots or the craft store and plant vining cherry tomatoes and "red noodle beans" (also from agrohaitai) on it. The beans are the asian "yard long" beans and they have a fantastic color. Am growing purple and yellow podded climbing beans too, and some heirloom speckled ones. They are beautiful. The purple are very pretty with purple stems, and lilac flowers.

You can add edible flowers at various times of the year too. How about nasturtiums for flowers and leaves, or johnny jump ups?

girlgroupgirl

Okra is a really nice plant too. They have large, medium green, rippled leaves with some maroon/purple veining and grow to around 3' in my zone. They get a nice yellow and purple flower down inside near the stem where the okra then grows. They don't require any kind of staking or anything, they have a nice thick stem.

MeMo

Put your cuke vines on a nice obisk...I have mine on a decorative large black one...and it makes a attractive plant. I usually put three or four vines on it. I have a 6 ft obisk.

Smokey, I know exactly what you mean. My veggie garden has always been fairly attractive until it comes time to plant tomatoes. For years I used 5' tall cages that dh made with concrete reinforcing wire. Practical, but not real pretty. I've also used a trellis system made with conduit and PVC ... also not the prettiest thing. I'd love to come up with something that lets my tomatoes vine to their heart's content and that looks good at the same time.

Natal, next year when I go from row gardening to raised beds, I plan to use cattle panels bent into an arch. I will plant alternating arches with all the different vining veggies. Then when I come through the arbor that leads into the "potager" I will walk down the row passing under each arch. I hope it turns out the way I have it in my head lol. FYI to newbies...You would have to use all indeterminate type tomatoes to have them vine over an arch. Maybe this would work in a specific spot in your garden?? GGG has a similar arrangement in her garden and it's beautiful. Hopefully she'll see this and post a picture of it?!! ;)

MeMo

What I think is important in a 'developement' garden is to have all your growing structures made out of the same materials - that way it adds continuity and is more pleasing to the eyes. A nice fence enclosure would also add to the look and not have the neighbors up in arms. I have seen some really beautiful veggie/flower gardens in some pretty pricey developments and they look really good when there is some sort of order. Every garden, however, is going to get that messy look towards the end of the season - that is just the nature of plants but it can be controlled. Of course this is coming from a 'do as I say not as I do' person - lol.....

Lynne

I hope Steven sees this post because he is doing something similiar integrating flowers and veggies in his front yard. I believe he faces similar restrictions so he was sort of blending his veggies in, and the results are gorgeous!

Steven, please post those pictures again. :-)

Marilyn

MeMo, it might have been you ... someone mentioned growing tomatoes on an arbor. The more I thought about it the less I liked the idea mainly because of the "yellow" issue. You know how tomato plants easily stain clothes. I really like using a trellis the best. I just need to come up with something attractive.

Like Lynne said every summer garden goes through a messy period at the end of the season, but I'd like to minimize that visual impact as much as possible.

I really do think, in this case, that Steven's garden will be far more help than mine. I can do anything I want here. Most of my structures are cattle panels, rebar or EMT pipe with wire strung on them.
The only thing we develop in this area are crackheads, boom cars, and "ladies" of the evening - there aren't too many of us "garden hoes", lol :)

GGG

I like my eggplant "Little Fingers" - purple flowers, cute little 6-8" fruits at a nice pace all summer. They have been fairly resistant to bugs (a few flea beetles) and the foliage stayed nice. I cut off a few yellow bottom-most leaves. You might want prettier stakes than the old broomsticks and slats I pounded into the ground.

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I grew it next to Ivory sweet peppers this year. Next year, my daughter-the-cook has requested orange and purple sweet peppers - should be colorful! The pepper foliage has also stayed good-looking and bug-free. I have a nice gold-edged thyme next to it, with a robust sweet potato vine running around in between (real sweet potato, not the ornamental vine - I'll dig up the taters after the other stuff dies back, right after the first frost).

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I think Zucchini looks tropical and I like the huge orange blossoms - but it went down under an onslaught of squash bugs and squash vine borers after giving us about 6 medium and 3 huge fruits. I plant sedum groundcover under it, so I don't have to reach into the spiny leaves to weed so often.

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I have a half-a-dozen couple pots of coleus and herbs that I move around to fill in holes as things die back.

I think the romaine heads looked nice back in the late spring and summer. I don't think I would go for Tomatoes out front - maybe a pot on a patio? Tomato plants can get really messy-looking just when they are producing the most tomatoes.

I have a very small urban yard, not in a "development" with picky neighbors, but I understand what you mean. I keep my eyes in my own yard, so I don't have to "see" what is on the other side of the fence in less-tended yards. But it would be different in a front yard on a more upscale street.

If looks are important, I would only grow a few veggie plants, mixed with flowers, to avoid the more "agricultural" look of a vegetable garden. And, as someone else mentioned, pay attention to how cute your trellis, stakes, and edges look.

I like flowers and herbs to soften the big producing veggie plants - I used hostas and coleus, and there is actually a rose to the left in this image, that will produce a second round of salmon-pink color not long after this photo in late June. I planted the marigolds too close to the tomato, and they were covered completely by July. I like the lacy dill flowers, and the patterns as the seed heads develop - I pulled them out after I harvested the seeds. The basil flowering is nice, too - I like to put some in cut flower bouquets for the spicy scent mixed with the sweet.

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Hi Smokey, and welcome to the forum. I just took a break from painting the kitchen and saw my name on this post. It's true that our city has an ordinance about growing veggies in our front gardens, although we don't live in a "nice development." I got around this by building a small potager that could be obscured by plantings around the perimeter:

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I haven't had any complaints so far. Hope this helps. Good luck and keep us posted!

Steven

Steven,

Those are the pictures I was referring to, and thank you for posting them!

Honestly, I don't know how anyone could possibly complain about your garden. It's beautiful. I think you have blended veggies and flowers seamlessly. Great job!

Welcome to the cottage,smokey. As you can see there are some really knowledgable and creative people on this forum. Looking forward to hearing about your progress.

Marilyn

Steven - that garden just blows me away everytime I see pictures of it - I could look at it all the time. I just can't imagine how you could leave it everyday to go to work....

Lynne

Matriarchy, Can you tell me what variety that beautiful spotted zucchini is? That's really attractive!

MeMo

It was a transplant from a local grower that lets you buy just one plant (40 cents) - great for small gardens. The variety was "President."

Every year we lose the battle to bugs, but we usually get a lot of zukes before then - the squash bugs hatch and the vine borers start doing major damage right about the time we get tired of zucchini bread. :-)

--Tracy