Best Herbs and Edibles for Shade

Lisa's Landscape & Design ♦ 07/21/2022 ♦ Leave a comment

Many of my clients have the idea that food has to be in isolated beds. This is only true if you use chemicals. If you’re organic, food can be EVERYWHERE!

The garden below is all edible. The seed puffs are bolted lettuce that will reseed for me next winter. This edible bed consists of rainbow chard, kale, mint, bee balm, lettuce, plum and pomegranate trees. 

Edible landscape

Cilantro while seasonal will reseed and return every winter and go to sleep once it reaches the 90’s. Entity- while you can and allow the seeds to spread wildly. 

Cilantro

Mint, while invasive in some cases, it’s easily maintained in divided beds and pots. It makes an excellent shade ground cover and is edible, deer resistant and typically evergreen. 

Spearmint

Lemon Balm is both beautiful and edible. It is a low mounding plant that I has beautiful texture and lavender flowers. Extremely fragrant, edible and medicinal.

Lemon balm eventually produce lavender flower puffs.

Chives and Garlic both thrive in shade beds and produce lavender flowers to boot.

Garlic and chives produce lavender flower balls.

Onions, like garlic and chives are part of the allium family. They love shade and part sun and produce huge white flower balls. 

Onions can be planted in the winter and harvested all summer.

Lemon Grass is a mosquito repellent and the root is excellent in tea and soups.

Lemon Grass

Parsley is a health bomb for gut and digestive issues and swallow tail caterpillars are also big fans!

Parsley

Dill weed is edible from leaves to flower and make great additions to part sun and shady gardens. The Swallowtails will gobble them up, so plant a few!

Dill Weed

Lettuce, while seasonal will last much longer in morning sun and afternoon shade. Allow it to go to seed for free lettuce next year. 

Lettuce is seasonal and come up over the winter when left to seed freely.

Rainbow Chard is as beautiful as it is delicious and when planted in afternoon shade is also an evergreen plant.

Rainbow Chard

Kale is another power house food that many don’t realize do beautifully in a low water, part shade garden. Typically perennial unless it’s too cold, this is a gift that keeps on giving. 

Curly Kale

Savory Sage is a culinary sage that really doesn’t enjoy our heat the way it’s inedible cousins do. Try them as ground cover in morning sun and you might be surprised by the results. 

Savory, or culinary Sage

Thyme of all kinds is edible and flowering like all of these plants. Many don’t realize that all herbs flower in the right setting. 

Thyme are savory or sweet with Fragrance. Evergreen and low water.

Bee Balm is as beautiful as it is medicinal and edible. 

Bee Balm comes in different colors and sleeps in the winter.

Citronella, both leaves and flower are edible. While we may think of mosquito spray, (and you’d be right) we don’t often realize it’s also a member of the geranium family. 

Citronella can be fickle in hard freeze but it’s worth protecting or replacing.

Oregano is another edible plant that enjoys a little shade. While some varieties can definitely take full sun, others prefer a reprieve from the afternoon heat. 

Oregano of all kinds do well in Central Texas and flower as well.

Chili Pequin is a shade loving pepper plant that really packs a punch. Small white flowers and tiny red peppers that will heat up anything you add them to. Proof that big heat comes in small packages. 

Chili Pequin

This is my vegetable bed, not what you might think of, but that’s what makes it so special. Another great aspect of this list of plants is that they’re xerophytic once established, as well as disease and pest resistant.

These are my herbs….which just happen to include a Methley   Plum tree for afternoon shade. 

This is one of my herb, fruit and veggie beds and I have rain barrels on either side for easy access.

Now that you’re feeling inspired, try something new this fall and see the wonders of edible diversity in the landscape. If you’d like help designing your edible space, contact me for an in person or online Educational Consultation or complete Landscape Design for anyone in hardiness zone 8a/b. 

Lisa LaPaso

Lisa’s Landscape and Design 

“Saving the Planet One Yard at a Time”