Edible Gardening, as it turns out in the 90s, were introduced by Dr. Leonido Naranja of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) to introduce the backyard food production while incorporating the basic principles of landscaping. But even agriculture-oriented countries in the west has been actively promoting and practicing edible landscaping or food gardening both as a means to a healthy lifestyle and ready access to fresh produce since the 1980s which is now very popular called “Urban Edible Landscaping”.
Edible gardening and landscaping in the Philippines is an innovative concept of combining various principles of gardening with the principle of landscaping in order to come up with a beautiful space with existing technologies for small-scale crop production. Edible Gardening and Landscaping utilizes vegetables, herbs, and fruit crops as major softscape materials to substitute for the ornamental plants commonly used in conventional landscaping. It considers the aesthetics and functionality of space in relation to the production of safe and readily available crop products for the family and community.
It is also in mind that edible gardening and landscaping involves various components such as softscape, hardscape, design, and crop production. The design part is very flexible and can vary from one cropping period to another, depending on the planting scheme chosen.