Evaluation of Selected Vegetable Crops with Ornamental Value in Sustainable Landscape Design: A Review

Abstract

As cities expand so rapidly and private garden space is shrinking, edible landscaping is on the rise. Edible landscaping is a design concept that combines food-producing plants with ornamental landscape design. The upshot is that a planted area can be both pleasing to the eye and nutritious. An increasing number of vegetable crops are treated as dual-purpose plants (edible and ornamental). However, the scientific documentation of their ornamental potential is scattered across different sources, such as plant breeding textbooks, plant physiology references and landscape design manuals, often dealing with individual species separately. This article attempts to assemble published evidence on the ornamental qualities of selected vegetable crops that collectively exemplify three different approaches to producing ornamental value in home gardens: (1) colourful fruits, exemplified by dwarf tomatoes and ornamental peppers; (2) coloured foliage, exemplified by flowering kale (ornamental cabbage); and (3) overall plant form, flowers or fragrance, exemplified by basil and okra. The article also seeks to identify research gaps and propose an integrated evaluation framework to balance aesthetic and productive values for guiding sustainable landscape design in the future.