Edible Gardens

The Muriel and Douglas Frost Herb Garden, with gifts from Nancy and Jim Kroening

The C. J. Telfer Orchard Garden, with gifts from William Dahlke

The Ken and Marcy Heim Small Fruit Garden, with gifts from Ken and Marcy Heim

The Edible gardens consist of the Herb, Vegetable, Small Fruits and Orchard gardens.  Food for human consumption was one of the first gardening incentives in history and continues to be an important function of many home gardens today.  In addition, these gardens include representative crops of economic importance grown (produced) in Wisconsin.

The Vegetable Garden is represented by both a traditional garden bed and containers.  Many vegetables are adaptable to container gardening, allowing homeowners to garden without owning a yard.  The bed garden is planted much later than typical for standard vegetable gardens because it is used as a teaching aid for the fall vegetable course and vegetables would be past their prime by that time. The Herb Garden is enclosed in interlocking twines of sheared barberry typical of the French parterre, an ornamental garden area in which the beds and paths form a pattern.  The use of two different color of barberry adds to the design. The Orchard Garden (above) contains semi-dwarf cultivars of two fruit crops important to Wisconsin, apples and cherries.  In addition, this garden also boasts a lovely line of apples and pears espaliered in the French style.  The Small Fruits Garden (left) demonstrates both traditional bed gardening and container gardening that support specially bred "colonnade" apples.