Edible Ornamentals and One of My Favorite Public Gardens

The Allen Centennial Garden on the UW-Madison campus is one of the smallest public gardens I regularly visit. It packs a lot into its small space, including an area dedicated to edible ornamentals, a pinetum, a scree garden, and much more.

Since winter is holding fast to Wisconsin, although I did see a bare spot in my yard today with inch tall tulips (insert wild applause, chanting, and crowd adoration for the coming of spring here!), it still only worked its way up to freezing. If you are a glass full type, maybe we could saying "melting temperatures".

Enjoy!


This first picture at the Allen shows a variety of cabbage, and kale, an artichoke in the foreground and some grains. I think they are buckwheat, sorghum, and millet.


This picture features Redbor kale and edible flowers.


This bed is primarily herbs. Not sure why they would mix in a poisonous plant like datura in an herb garden. Datura is medicinal, but best left to chemists, not gardeners.




The limey-yellow plant with the pinkish-orange bloom is a decorative-leaved geranium.




The next few pictures show some great plant combinations from the scree and trough gardens. Some of these plants are "temperperennials", meaning not annuals but not hardy to this zone.




Let me know if you need the name of something. I can identify almost all of these cultivars, if you are actively looking to obtain a particular specimen pictured here.