Growing an Edible Lawn
Answered by: Inge Poot
Question from: Margaret McShine
Posted on: January 08, 2009

I would like to grow a lawn with edible vegetable, like bugle, yarrow, lady’s mantle, Allium oleraceum/ garlic.

What you think about this? Is there a place that I can purchase these items to start my project. If so please let me know.

I would only recommend including medicinal herbs in an herb lawn if you know there will be no children playing on it and if you know the herbs sufficiently well that you can be sure to be able to tell them apart at any stage.

I think it would be much safer to have only vegetables with maybe some innocuous medicinal herbs such as Echinacea (stimulating the immune system is not potentially fatal) grown for accents. You could do a type of knot garden if you want to grow many different herbs. That would confine them to certain areas and make telling them apart less of a chore. Also, if the kids roll in garlic, it is not fatal and they will probably start eating it (if I go by what my children did), but they will come in smelling awful! Having them in a more formal arrangement might stop the "rolling" in them!

Richters is a great source for the herbs you mentioned. You can buy them as plants, bulbs or seeds. Do consult our on-line catalogue. Some perennial culinary (and mild medicinal)herbs you might wish to try are thymes, creeping and winter savory, lemon balm, salad burnet, Roman and English chamomile, chives, red clover(mild medicinal), bloody dock, sweet and bronze fennel, heartsease (flowers are edible), horehound, horseradish(hard to get rid of once it is established), lavender, mints(invasive though), mugwort, oreganos, sweet pink, sage, shallots, sorrels, strawberries, sweetgrass, tarragon, vanilla grass(sweet vernal grass), sweet violet, sweet woodruff, wormwood and yarrow.

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