How amazing would it be to have your entire garden made up with snacks at hand? The idea of planting an edible landscape is very appealing and sounds like the perfect solution for gardeners with limited space. The real task at hand is finding vegetables that can survive outside of a fenced-in vegetable garden fortress. Deer, squirrels, groundhogs, rabbits and many other critters have no boundaries when it comes to foraging, so that is something to take into consideration if you are planting an edible garden.

Whatever your criteria be, it’s crucial to choose plants that will thrive where you live. Get outside and take a walk around your neighborhood to see which plants are thriving and take notes on the one’s you do not see as well. Another consideration to take in is interplanting edibles with ornamentals for better results. This not only means adding variety to your garden, but also creating a balance for a wide variety of microbes, insects, amphibians and birds lessening your need for pest control.

If you like to experiment with edible landscaping, here are some starting points for vegetables:

- Artichokes: most animals will not want to munch on the prickly leaves and as long as the flowers are a few feet off of the ground, nothing should touch them.

- Beans: the leaves of these plants are more attractive to animals than the actual pods. To get around this, you can grow pole varieties in the flower borders by encircling the bottoms of the plants like in chicken wire.

- Eggplant: most four-footed animals avoid eggplants. That could be because they are scratchy and even thorny, or as a memeber of the nighshade family, animals may stay away from it.

- Onions, Garlic & Chives: Humans are the only to devour these alliums. If there are any fail-safe vegetables for edible landscaping, it would be these three. You can protect other vegetables by interplanting them with chives, but chives have a tendency to quickly spread.

- Peppers: this poses the same benefits as growing beans. The leaves are more attractive to animals than the fruits. Once the stems toughen up, the damage becomes minimal.

- Herbs: perennial herbs are the safest choice for edible landscaping. Surprisingly, herbs like basil, cilantro and parsley are appealing to animals even considering their strong scent. But woodier herbs like sage, oregano, thyme, lemongrass, rosemary and lavender all fare better in the yard.

- Edible Flowers: this may seem a bit off, but planting these in your vegetable garden makes it seem more sensible to snip them for a salad. Be sure not to feed or spray them with anything you do not want to ingest! Try nasturtiums or violets.

- Fruit Trees, Nuts and Berries: Although all of these are alluring to animals, there is generally enough to go around, with a little netting and protection. The positive side of using these plants as an edible landscape is that they require minimal care and look good for at least 3 or more seasons.

Some vegetables are too tempting for a hungry animal to resist. You may want to avoid edible landscaping with vegetables from these 3 groups:

1) Greens: leafy salad greens are not the route you want to take. Oddly enough, rabbits do not gravitate towards the lettuce, it’s the deer and groundhogs.

2) Corn: this can be an unconventional ornamental grass, but unfortunately squirrels and racoons love nothing more than to climb the corn stalks and devour the cobs, bending them over to share with their fellow friends. This plant is also best when planted in multiple rows, which doesn’t work well in a backyard landscape.

3) Peas: every animal seems to love tendrils and pods. While you can attempt to hide these vegetables by interplanting them with some of the more animal repellent plants, like lavender and onions…this doesn’t always work.

If you plan to grow an edible alongside ornamentals in your yard, make sure you do your research on interplanting and companion planting. Most commercial pesticides and many herbicides use chemicals that are not designed to be ingested by humans. Consuming those harmful chemicals can potentially be very hazardous to your health, so if an edible landscape is your goal, opt for more natural pest control, such as neem oil or companion planting.