Top Perennial Plants For a Food Producing Garden

Including plenty of perennial plants can help you create a far lower maintenance food producing garden. Many new gardeners will stick to traditional annual crops when getting started with growing their own. But there are many perennial plants to consider which can provide you with an edible yield.

Choosing perennial plants can be an eco-friendly choice. Since perennial plants will remain in your garden year after year. Perennial planting schemes will sequester more carbon than annual crops, and keep it locked up in plants and the soil. And perennial planting schemes can be healthy and biodiverse ecosystems which support local wildlife, as well as helping you meet your own needs.

A perennial planting scheme might be developed in a small bed or border. You might also consider creating larger polycultures, fruit trees and guilds, perhaps, or even a food forest or edible forest garden design. Of course, you might also include some biennials and self-seeding annuals – but perennial plants are usually the backbone of any sustainable, low-maintenance garden.

To help you get started with perennial food production, here are some of the top perennial plants for a food producing garden in the UK:

Fruit and Nut Trees

The first, and arguably most important, category of perennial food producing plants to consider is trees. Fruit and nut trees can be wonderful options for a perennial garden in the British Isles. Of course, there are many options to consider, and the right options for you will depend on exactly where you live, and the precise conditions to be found there. However, in most of the UK, top options will include:

• Apples (cooking, dessert and cider apples, and crab apples)

• Plums (wild and cultivated, and related damsons and gages)

• Pears

• Cherries (wild, sour and sweet)

• Mulberries

• Quince

• Medlar

• Figs

• Elderberries

• Blackthorn/ Sloe

• Serviceberries (Amelanchier ssp.)

• Arbutus unedo (strawberry tree)

• Hazel/ Cob nut

• Sweet chestnuts

• Walnuts (in more southern gardens)

Some pines can also be grown for pine nuts, acorns and beech masts also have edible uses, and the monkey puzzle tree produces large edible nuts (but only for future generations as they will yield only after around 40 years).

In more southern, protected or undercover growing areas, you may also successfully grow:

• Apricots/ Peaches/ Nectarines

• Guavas

• Pineapple guava

• Loquats

• Persimmons

• Pomegranates

• Citrus fruits

Fruit Bushes and Cane Fruits

The next most important category of perennial edibles is soft fruits and berries produced on shrubs and canes.

UK gardeners should consider, for example:

• Blackberries

• Raspberries

• Tayberries/ Boysenberries (and other hybrid types)

• Wineberries

• Blueberries

• Currants

• Gooseberries

• Jostaberries (and other hybrid berries)

• Goji berries

• Honeyberries

Of course, you should also consider growing strawberries (both garden strawberries and wild/ woodland/ alpine strawberry types)

Edible Perennial Climbers

It is also worthwhile considering the potential to grow perennial edible climbers in your garden. For example, you might grow:

• Grapes

• Hardy kiwi

• Passionfruit

• Hops

• Apios americana (groundnut/ cinnamon vine)

Perennial Vegetables

Perennial vegetables are a category often overlooked by new gardeners. But there are a huge variety of perennial vegetables that you could grow. These can often be great alternatives to traditional annual crops. Or can be grown in addition to them.

Some great perennial vegetables to consider include plants for leafy greens such as:

• perennial brassicas

• sorrels

• Good king henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus)

• Sea kale (Crambe maritima)

• chicory

• wild rocket

• mallows

• hostas

• nettles etc..

There are also trees to grow for edible leaves, such as the lime (Tilia) tree, hawthorn, and mulberries, for example.

Perennial alliums such as:

• Babington’s Leek

• Welsh onion/ walking onions

• Elephant garlic

• Wild garlic/ ramsons etc..

Stem and flower vegetables like:

• Asparagus

• Globe artichokes

• Cardoons

• Rhubarb (edible stems only of course – the rest of the plant is poisonous).

And roots like:

• dandelions

• Jerusalem artichokes

• skirret

• earth nuts

• pignuts… to name just a few examples.

Perennial Herbs and Flowers

Of course, for flavour and variety in your homegrown diet, and as companion plants or guild plants for your other food producing perennials, UK growers should also consider growing a range of perennial herbs and flowers.

Common perennial culinary herbs include:

• Rosemary

• Sage

• Thyme

• Oregano

• Marjoram

• Tarragon

• Chives

• Mints

• Bergamot

• Hyssop

• Lemon balm

• Lovage

• Sweet cicely

Some of the most useful flowers in a perennial planting scheme include:

• Comfrey (for fertility, through chopping and dropping, and medicinal use).

• Clovers (for nitrogen fixation, but also potentially for edible flowers).

• Dandelions (for fertility – dynamic accumulation, and edible uses).

• Lavender (for use in moderation as a pot herb, and for wildlife attraction).

• Roses (for edible hips etc..).

• Hollyhocks (for edible flowers as well as wildlife).

• Pinks (Dianthus) (also for edible flowers as well as wildlife).

• Day lilies (Hemerocallis) (edible flowers, shoots and tubers).

• Violets (edible flowers).

Though there are many more perennial flowers which are either edible themselves or which provide crucial ecosystem benefits and attract plenty of beneficial wildlife to your space. Remember, a successful food producing garden will provide not only for you, but also for the other creatures which share your garden. And diverse wildlife will help you achieve your gardening goals.

Of course, the options mentioned above are just some of the many perennial plants that can be included to create a food producing garden. But perhaps looking at the lists of plants above will help you begin to develop a sustainable planting scheme in your garden.

Do you grow any of these plants for food in your garden? Which plants have you chosen and how exactly have you decided to combine them? Where and how do you grow them in your garden? Share any tips or suggestions you have have for UK gardeners in the comments below.