Eat Your Yard: Edible Trees, Shrubs, Vines, Herbs, and Flowers For Your Landscape

by Nan K. Chase

Eat Your Yard! has information on 35 edible plants that offer the best of both landscape and culinary uses. Edible plants provide spring blossoms, colorful fruit and flowers, lush greenery, fall foliage, and beautiful structure, but they also offer fruits, nuts, and seeds that you can eat, cook, and preserve. Author Nan K. Chase shares her first-hand experience with gardening, which lends the reader landscaping ideas as well as special culinary uses for fruit trees, including the crabapple and quince, nut trees, such as the chestnut and almond, and covering herbs and vines like the bay, grape, lavender, mint, and thyme. She instructs how to harvest pawpaw, persimmon, and other wildflowers for your meal as well as figs, kumquats, olives and other favorites. Mixing the ordinary with the exotic, most of the plants, trees, and shrubs featured in Eat Your Yard! can grow almost anywhere. With recipes ranging from savory cherry sauce and pickled grape leaves to pomegranate molasses and roasted duck with dried-fruit chutney, Eat Your Yard! is much more than just a landscaping guide. Includes tips and ideas Crabapple Jelly Use this jelly in yogurt with nuts for breakfast or as a glaze for roasted game or poultry.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Reference, Food, Cookbooks, Plants, Cooking

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Melody · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty photographs and clearly and concisely written prose do nothing to hide the fact that there's just nothing new here. It's the same old perennials, the same old fruit trees, the same shrubby plants that are in every garden book. Not what I was looking for. I wanted more of a Mother Earth News meets Foxfire meets Euell Gibbons sort of book, and I got Home & Garden meets Sunset instead.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd hoped for good ideas on how to make a nice-looking edible landscape, but the book is mostly a list of different plants that might look nice in a landscape, plus some recipes. It's not a long list, either. Nothing particularly new or of interest here. Ended up skimming.

[jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book describes landscape highlights (seasonal interest, good for hedges, etc), edible highlights, where it grows best (climate and situation), some cultivation tips, photos and recipes. I learned that pickled nasturtium seeds can be used as “poor mans capers," which is interesting since I'm hoping to add nasturtiums to our yard this year. There is not a lot of new information if you are well-versed in the world of edible landscaping, but the photos are inspirational. I wasn't too excited about most of the recipes, but in general I try not to grow things I'm not already inspired to eat a lot of. I usually depend on cook books for recipes, not gardening books.

The book is best used as a plant list for those trying to think about how to fit edible things into their yard, although it's far from the most comprehensive book in this genre. Please see Edible Landscaping for the best book on this subject. The plant lists are good, though, if you have never thought about the weird kinds of food that come come from your yard. It is broken out like this:

Favorite Fruits: Apple, Cherry, Crabapple, Peach, Pear, Plum, Quince

Nuts & Berries: Almond, Blueberry, Chestnut, Hazelnut/Filbert, Pecan, Walnut

Herbs & Vines: Bay Tree, Grape, Kiwi, Lavender, Mint, Nasturtium, Rosemary, Sage, Thyme

Hot-Country Choices: Fig, Kumquat, Lemon, Lime, Orange, Olive, pomegranate

Wildflowers: Pawpaw, Persimmon, Prickly Pear, Yucca, Rose, Sunflower


If you know much about plants, you can see that many of these only thrive in specific environments and may not be suitable for your yard. The best thing they could add to this book would be more specific information about edible varieties. For example, lavender is edible as long as its organic, but some of the varieties are vastly better for eating/cooking/baking. The rest of them make nice potpourri. (yuck) There is good advice about having multiple plants in order to get cross-pollination. This is important because a lot of beginning gardeners (like someone who would get a lot out of this book) might not know that they need two peach/hazelnut/blueberry bushes to get a decent crop.

All in all, this is a good jumping-off point and certainly inspirational, but should be the first stop on a longer research journey if you are going to be investing lots of money and time into your yard/farm.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting little book. It provided a very cursory list of items to plant in your yard that are pretty as well as edible. None of the listings provide much, if any, growing or care info. Also, many items are really only growable in warmer climates, so if you are in California or Florida, you're in luck, Indiana, not so much. As I borrowed this book from the library I wasn't too disappointed, but if I had bought the book, I'd have felt a little cheated.
Be that as it may, I did glean two or three ideas of things to plant, I'll just have to do research on my own to see if they are doable in my zone, and how to care for them.

[Kathy (McDowell) Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I expected this book to tell me to pick and eat all the violets, wild ginger, and wild onion in my yard, though I hoped it would not. I was pleasantly surprised by its urging to plant fruit and nut trees, berries, herbs, and edible vines. Ms. Chase informs the reader the trees and shrubs that need another variety for cross-pollination. My personal goals are to plant what grows best in my area, harvest what I can easily, and share the rest with nature. I don't use pesticides in my yard and I don't think Ms. Chase does, either. This is a short book (152 p.) with a lot of useful information.

[Trang · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like it, really. The book did a good job to introduce the kinds of trees that should and can be planted in the yard. It provided the seasons and trais for each tree. Of course, the intro book is like a catalogue. It doesn't provide enough details on how to plant each tree. For that, it's too specific to include in a book. I would rather ask Google or ChatGPT for advice. The expectation for this book is met. I learned about a number of trees I could possibly plant in my yard. Thanks.

[Pam · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has insufficient information for any gardener, a newbie or an experienced one. The plants presented are just the most common. No information on the zones where these plants will grow is presented. It is pretty but not worth a serious gardener's time.

[William Bransford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty general information on the various trees, shrubs, vines, herbs and flowers discussed in the book. Provided first step look at a few plants we may want to grow on our property. Was not much into the poetic way the other wrote about each planet.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very basic, featuring many plays quite well known. Recipes are fun, the rest is on the Internet.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I checked this book out from the library, I was expecting it to be a cookbook. Although, it has some good recipes, it's more of a gardening book. I suppose the subtitle and the cover art should have been a give-away. That being said, I will be reviewing it as both a gardening and cookbook.

There are two types of gardeners; those who grow pretty flowers (and don't necessarily care if they're edible) and those who grow edible fruits and vegetables (and don't necessarily care if they're pretty). This book is for those who belong were the two groups overlap. If you want to have their pretty garden and eat it too, you might like this book. The recipes might have been its strong point. Although, some of them are pretty basic (there's at least one for jam), it's got some more ... advanced recipes (like biscotti). Something for everyone cookbook wise.

[Toni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say she likes sugar more than I do (she includes a recipe for each entry).

Almost all the plants in this book are known by most people to be edible. Yucca and nopales are examples of some that people might not know are edible. So, if you wanted a book chock full of edible plants you didn't know about, this book will fall short of your expectations.

I enjoyed the book. I docked a star because she said this:
"Not all berry bushes are attractive in the landscape . . . . Blackberries and raspberries not so nice."
I completely, heartily, and thoroughly disagree.

She also said, "Strawberries: wonderful fruit but little landscape value." I disagree with this, too.

The prices she mentions are obviously way outdated (my book is from 2010). She gives resources in the back, which is nice.

All in all, I enjoyed the book.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book felt incredibly lazy. Generic information, recipes from the Internet, stock photos. Total waste of time.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

An semi-interesting overview with nice pictures, but so unspecific as to be almost entirely unhelpful. Sections are like, "Apples. Apples are nice. Here's a story about apples. Some apples like well-draining soil. Some are short and some are tall..." -- without even naming specific varieties -- "Do some research to find out which apple will grow best in your climate."
Does get the creative juices flowing a bit, though.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book on how to landscape with perennial plants and fruit/nut trees. Certainly far more useful for a homeowner than for a tenant. Emphasis on both the utility and aesthetics of the plants in an edible landscape. Nice pictures, interesting little recipes, but nothing that I would find particularly useful as someone who relocates every few years.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was hoping for something else when I saw this. This book has all the usual suspects in it, some recipes, but not much else. This is basically a book containing various types of fruit trees/plants, little else.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't help me plan my yard at all (the plants that were suitable for our zone were all too common, and many were not suitable to the Pacific Northwest) which is what I was hoping for. Recipes are mostly common and boring.

[Monnette · Rating 3 out of 5]

the best things about this book are the pictures and the recipes. an Easy read, didn't feel like I learned much, didn't really get any ideas to implement in my garden. I've thing I did learn was that rose hips are a great source of vitamin c. too bad I don't like the taste of roses

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is pretty much a list of types of edible food that you can grow in your garden with a little bit of information about each plant (hardiness zones, how to grow it, etc) and a recipe for each plant.

[Lenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found out that I have several things in my yard that I didn't know were edible. For example: Yucca and Prickly Pear Cacti.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who knew that a dwarf pomegranate would act like a bush? I think we might get some for our yard. I highly recommend it as a starting point for ideas. I'm checking this one out again.

[Wilma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very helpful in allowing me to select specific trees for my backyard design with specific information regarding spacing, fruiting and sunlight requirements.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe not much new, but I loved it. The photography is gorgeous and inspiring. Best part is, the writer is from just over the mountain! So what works for her, should work for me.

[Khristiey · Rating 2 out of 5]

nice book for novices to my the permaculture movement. really cool recipes though. worth a look. but i wouldn't run out and buy it for the library.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not original but nicely written and excellent pictures.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a separate chapter for different edible trees, shrubs, vines etc. but a lot of those are not available where I live so I didn't find this book as helpful as I had hoped.

[Nesseroni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basic content....was hoping for something more.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basic overviews with no details for growing in any specific zones