Edible Landscaping produces myriad varieties of unusual fruits such as dwarf pears, Pakistan and weeping mulberries, hardy kiwi, gooseberries and currants, edible dogwood and oriental persimmons, old varieties of apples, blueberries and figs.

Edible landscaping is a ingenious trend that incorporates edible plants into the permanent home landscape. I have two weeping mulberries planted to the southwest of my house, where I hope their mounding, weeping habit will obscure what little of the road I can still see. The fact that they bore fruit this year was icing on the cake.

The oriental persimmons bear large, apple-sized, orange persimmons late in the year, when there is little other color in the landscape. Gooseberries might be incorporated into that mixed shrub border between you and the neighbor. Figs can be coaxed into bearing very good fruit if given quite a lot of sun. And the “Avonblue” selection of blueberry only grows 3 feet tall with a 5 foot spread, making it adaptable to a mixed shrub border, or to a dedicated, if small, spot in the garden.

The day lilies have been blooming profusely at every roadside site, and through them is growing, in several locations, the perennial, sweet pea. Something of a landscape weed, it is a beautiful one, especially when its rosy-pink flowers scramble though a stand of orange day lily. It produces an effect that is quintessentially summertime.

The perennial sweet pea is a much more heat-tolerant plant than the annual sweet pea that quits on the first blistering day. The perennial sweet pea will climb to a height of 9 feet if supported, but more often it is seen scrambling along banks, over fences or through day lilies.