Best Plants for the Edges of Raised Beds

If you're gardening in raised beds like me, you want to squeeze food out of every last square inch. My trick? I plant vegetables, herbs, and flowers right along the edges—and sometimes let them spill right over the sides of my 16-inch-tall beds. These are five of my absolute favorites for edible edging.

‘Fantastico’ is one of those tomatoes that seems tailor-made for pots, hanging baskets, and raised beds. The determinate plants max out at just a foot tall, but then they cascade up to two feet over the edge like a delicious waterfall. A single plant can pump out up to twelve pounds of super-sweet, grape-shaped fruits starting in midsummer. And here's a bonus: these tough little plants shrug off late blight.

No kitchen garden is complete without parsley—that fresh pop of flavor lifts salads, pastas, and just about everything else. I grow plenty of ‘Giant Italian’ for bulk harvesting, but it's the compact curly parsley that earns the prime real estate along my raised bed edges. The curly varieties stay about a foot tall and spread up to 18 inches, and we pick those deeply frilled leaves constantly through the season. Any extras get dried for winter soups and stews.

Genovese basil is wonderful, but at up to two feet tall, it's too bulky for bed edges. That's where Greek basil varieties shine—they form dense, rounded little bushes just eight to twelve inches tall. Sometimes called little-leaf or globe basils, they deliver surprisingly bold flavor in those tiny leaves and bring a tidy, almost formal look to the food garden. My top picks are ‘Spicy Globe,’ ‘Aristotle,’ and ‘Pluto.’

Winter squash can gobble up garden space fast, so I stick with compact-vined varieties that can spill over the bed's edge instead of swallowing the whole bed. ‘Butterscotch PMR,’ an All-America Selections winner, is a mini butternut that bears adorable one- to two-pound fruits. The plants are impressively productive and, true to the “PMR” in their name, stand up to powdery mildew.

If there's one annual flower every vegetable garden needs, it's nasturtiums. Every part is edible—flowers, leaves, and seeds—and those vivid blooms are a magnet for pollinators and helpful insects. I grow at least a dozen varieties every summer, casually tucking the big seeds along my bed edges in late spring. They never disappoint.

Image courtesy ofAll-America Selections.