Usefull garden?

Our outdoors has significantly got better this year!

We have terraced a bit of our hill and installed the vegetable garden.
We have had a parking spot made out of a part of land we weren't using.
We are busy preparing the spot for fruit. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries & apple trees Will be installed soon.


I have Made a big decision regarding all of this. I want everything in my garden to be usefull! Have you ever heard/seen such a garden? I was inspired by a newspaper article.

Fruit & veggies to eat, herbs to cook, etc... Anything planted i want usefull or at least non toxic.

I have a few more things to look into.

Surrounding the parking spot (it is going to be rocks cause grass is too difficult to cut there, given the geography) i want to burry a few planters and i am thinking arnica, calendula, chamomile & echinacea.

In the front of the house is only rocks so i am thinking creeping thyme.

In the containers on the terrace i think crabapples Will look beautiful.

What do you guys think about that? What is usefull in your gardens?

That all sounds fantastic Tamara - I'm looking forward to seeing photos when it's done. Have you come across the garden writer Bob Flowerdew? He likes to grow only plants which are useful, whether for food, drink or medicine.

Well, Tamara, I like to think all the things in my garden are useful but you might not agree. Any plants that attract wildlife, I think are useful. Any flowers that smell wonderful are useful to me - because they make me happy. I do know what you mean, though.

I really like this idea Tamara.  But it is probably less limiting than one might imagine, if you try hard enough to find uses !  Many things have been used by man for something at some point.

In my garden - obviously the trees and larger shrubs, when they get too big or need pruning - provide wood for either making into things, or burning.  I've saved some apple wood this year for smoking Jalapeno chillies with, if I get enough. Or the smaller stuff is shredded for compost which is first used for tomatoes then as a soil conditioner.  There's the obvious edible crops - apples, quince, vines for grapes and vine leaves for Greek cookery.  Then there are loads of things that are ornamental and edible too ... Herbs are great for their flowers and loved by bees too.  Then there are artichokes, asparagus, bay, amaranth, sunflowers which all have architectural value and give an edible bonus.  Wigwams of beans and tall peas look very attractive to my eyes too !

Go for it Tamara, I think it's good to think about what you are putting in the garden & why.  I've certainly thought about it far more since I have kept bees & no plant gets a look in if it does not attract pollinators.  The up side is that I now get hundreds of bumblebees, bee flies, butterflies & others as well as my own bees.  I've got a big area of grass - I suppose it's useful in that it saves me the work of doing anything with the area apart from cutting it but I leave a margin alongside the river for the frogs & toads which in turn eat slugs & keep them off my veggies.
 There's a shrub in the garden that looks just boring & it roots into the ground wherever the stems touch which is a pain - but, when it gets it's tiny, almost invisible flowers it smells heavenly & the bumblebees love it .... so it stays.  
We're surrounded by a lot of wild stuff & I  like to make use of what I can, there's something very satisfying about foraging for free - elderflowers & berries, rowan berries, sloes, crab apples & damsons, wild garlic, blackberries & hazelnuts if the squirrels leave any.  My honey comes mainly from sycamore, blackberry, clover & willowherb sometimes with some willow & hawthorn.

I've tried to make everything functional in our garden - from necessity mainly, as we are both now in low-paid jobs, so food from the garden helps to balance the finances. But this year I'm beginning to think about having a few more patches of flowers to feed the soul as well as the stomach! As Ploshkin says, the flowers will attract pollinating insects, so they do have a use. Probably my favourite thing in the garden is Grapefruit mint, which has the most wonderful scent - I don't use it for anything except to go and rub the leaves and get an instant lift!

Thanks all for your comments!

I guess we all have a different "useful'! (Sorry for the mispelling, my autocorrect wrote usefull and i trusted it though i probably shouldn't, he's french...)

I guess my useful is based on the fact i don't really want anything toxic with my toddler running around. Plus i'm biaised by my being a pharmacist, i tend to know medicinal plants better.

Thanks for the name Dandelion, i Will look it up!
Freebird, i love the smell of flowers, love seeing butterflies all over my garden, but i don't care for the bees.. At all! So i tend to avoid to attract them. Though i know i do need them!
Chili-head, wow you've got great ideas and inspiration! I do not know how to make chairs like you do though!
Yes Ploshkin, i love going into the land and finding things i can do something with!


I Will try and keep you posted on our works!

Here are a few pics already!



This is where we had a parking spot Made, and where we terraced the hill to make our veggies patch.



And this is where the strawberries Will go. You can see a tiny bit of the raised beds the veggies are in. We are currently building a last one.



And this is where the raspberries and blueberries are coming! The land is ours til you can see the plants growing that is our neighbours place.

Looking forward to send the after pictures!

What a beautiful house - and what amazing views!!

It is a great spot. And I can see that you're doing cartwheels with joy  

Wow, what a lovely location Tamara - what altitude are you?
We're surrounded by hills but the landscape is nowhere near as open as that. We're at about 650' but in a hollow which makes growing things quite challenging. Like you we get lots of rain but that is part of what makes the place so green & beautiful.

We are about 750m Ploshkin.

It is a really lovely Space. The house is small but we love it! Fell in love and bought it! It is an eco building.

Haha Chili-Head! Actually they were building a house right behind ours. One day a truck was taking over most of the road Space and 2 workers were having fun driving on our property with their dumpers full of earth, back and forth, all day! Needless to say i went out shouting at them and we got our parking spot done at a decent price!