Biodiversity 

Include a wide variety of edible plants, such as fruits, vegetables, herbs, and even edible flowers. Biodiversity not only improves the visual appeal of a landscape, but it also promotes ecological balance by attracting beneficial insects and pollinators. 

Companion Planting

Use companion planting tactics to get the most out of interplanting suitable species. Companion plants can aid in insect control, nutrient intake, and general garden health.

Successional Planting 

Plan for continual harvesting by staggering crop planting and maturity phases. This helps to assure a consistent supply of fresh vegetables throughout the growing season and avoid an overload of produce all at once.

Planting dates should be adjusted according on your individual area climate and frost dates. Additionally, to guarantee a successful harvest, give necessary care such as watering, mulching, and pest management.

Drip Irrigation  

Consider implementing a drip irrigation system to ensure that your edible landscape receives regular and efficient water distribution. This eliminates water waste while also assisting in the maintenance of ideal soil moisture levels. 

Rainwater Harvesting

Rainwater harvesting systems, such as rain barrels or cisterns, can be used to collect and store rainwater. This long-term water supply may be utilized for agriculture, minimizing reliance on municipal water sources. 

Mulching

Regularly mulching helps to retain soil moisture and vital nutrients that lie within the planting bed.

Gardens and planters/materials must be accessibly for children to garden with. We must create a space for children to explore, be independent, learn, and thrive.  

Upcycled & Recycled Materials

Include eco-friendly and cost-effective elements in your edible landscape ideas. For raised beds, paths, and garden buildings, use reused or repurposed materials, like wood or concrete. This not only decreases your project's environmental imprint, but it also lowers the barrier to entrance for many communities and individual households. 

Compost Systems

Composting systems may be integrated into your landscape to recycle organic waste from the garden and kitchen. Compost not only improves the soil, but it also eliminates the need for synthetic fertilizers, making gardening more accessible and inexpensive to everyone. 

Community Engagement

Encourage community engagement by arranging workshops and instructional programs on reusing and creatively employing discarded materials in garden projects. This allows residents to actively engage in sustainable landscape design while keeping expenditures under control. 

Edible landscapes and community gardens serve as a social gathering space for many communities, bringing people of various backgrounds together. 

Edible landscapes act as a method to bring food production back into urban landscapes. Through the connection of a community to its food system, knowledge is built around the origins of food, and how to utilize these urban agriculture tools to boost food production within urban communities. 

Studies have shown that edible landscapes within urban environments can improve food and nutrition security regardless of the scale of the food production, the type of food being produced, the location of the edible landscape itself, or the income level of the individual/family/community contributing to the edible landscape. Access to food, developing into a sense of community food security, is the ultimate goal of introducing edible landscapes into urban communities; however, this also provides communities with the power to decide which foods will be produced from within their community. Community access to foods ultimately provides urban communities with a degree of resiliency to unpredictable crises and an overall feeling of self-sufficiency.  

There are many ways that edible landscapes via food systems can be incorporated into the existing fabric of the urban landscape; however, ideally, edible landscapes would exist as a framework around which to create and develop urban landscapes. If we began incorporating open spaces at any scale to create food systems within urban environments, we would begin to create cities with sustainable food security goals in mind and methods to achieve them.  

Edible Landscapes improve health through many facets of everyday life that contribute to sustainable urban development. Each of the functions that edible landscapes can perform in an urban environment contribute to improved health by positively benefiting other aspects of human life that ultimately attribute back to health and wellness such as improving urban agricultural diversity and ecosystem services.  

When the ecosystem is thriving and biodiversity is blooming within an urban landscape, community issues such as food security, water resource regulation, and air quality are all enhanced and improved upon through the introduction and sustenance of edible landscapes. Locally grown foods give individuals, families, and communities control over the foods they will be consuming, as well as providing healthy and nutritious foods.  

There are numerous advantages that the presence of plants in your everyday life can bring to your physical and mental health. The alleviation of some stress and anxiety, improved self-esteem, decreased chances of developing developmental and neurological disorders, an increase in productivity, creativity, and focus, and heightened happiness and contentment with life are a few examples of the positive role plants can play in your health and well-being.

A reliance on commercial agriculture has fostered a vulnerable society susceptible to food insecurity and a fading sense of self-sufficiency among community members. However, there is an abundance of opportunities within the urban landscape to create food systems.

Within the United States, we have become abundantly reliant on purchasing almost entirely all foods purchased from some sort of grocery store or commercial establishment within our city. However, this reliance on convenience and access to necessities has left in its wake a society that can no longer boast a self-sufficiency needed for a city to thrive on its own. Without the ability for individual cities to function without resources being supplied from anywhere else, many cities are unable to even meet the needs of the city or its community members. 

The function of an edible landscape or food system within an urban environment can contribute to the existence of multi-functional landscapes; for example, we should view all open spaces within a city as an opportunity to cultivate agricultural lands as to provide for the future food needs of the community. Public parks, rooftops, backyards. roadsides, vacant lots, community sidewalks, etc., are the ideal opportunities to weave these edible urban gardens to increase food security. 

Overall, edible landscapes can have a positive impact on human health, social connections, food security, environmental conditions, and many other relevant social issues within urban communities. With these many positive benefits, urban landscapes designed with a food systems framework in mind will thrive and ultimately foster sustainable urban communities with strong community values, a healthy society, and food security for all.