Sometimes, what’s good for you looks good in your garden too, as is the case with Swiss chard. This foodstuff’s foliage is too attractive to relegate to vegetable gardens alone.
At Denver Botanic Gardens, Ebi Kondo, a horticulturist and designer, integrates vegetables in his innovative designs.
“You don’t have to segregate vegetables as a crop,” Kondo said. “Many vegetables when they were first received from other countries were considered ornamentals. Tomatoes were thought to be poisonous and were initially used only as ornamentals.”
Swiss chard ranks as one of Kondo’s favorite artful veggies. “It’s quite beautiful and really a fun plant.”
Swiss chard, as it turns out, originated not in Switzerland, but in the Mediterranean. Horticultural history indicates that Swiss chard was cultivated in Greece as early as 325 B.C.
A biennial generally treated as an annual, Swiss chard has remained largely unheralded in the U.S., but its botanic name – beta vulgaris – identifies the plant as a common species. This cruciferous vegetable is a form of beet, but rather than the root, chard is cultivated for the ruffly leaves and celery-like stalks. The greens pack a nutritional punch with vitamins A and C, as well as iron.
In addition to their food value, chard delivers aesthetic value. The most ordinary Swiss chard produces pale stalks with crinkly, verdant leaves. These plants in their own right hold up as elegant and fitting companions, particularly for paler plant palettes.
But these greens need not be merely green. The varieties known as “Rhubarb” and “Red” deliver enormous eye appeal benefiting from complementary colors: Burgundy stems and veins offset their spruce green foliage. A veritable circus clown vegetable, “Bright Lights” ranges from deep orange to magenta to egg yolk yellow.
In 1998, “Bright Lights” seeds gained the gardening distinction of being named an All America Selection.
“And for good reason,” Kondo said. “They’re very reliable.”
In Denver Botanic Gardens’ greenhouse, Kondo starts his Swiss chard plants from seeds, which, in size and texture, resemble Grape Nuts cereal. A packet includes about a teaspoon of seeds.
“It can be tough to start in the ground, and it takes more time,” Kondo said, “but every season I see more nurseries carry Swiss chard plants.”
If you find six-pack cells of the plants, don’t let their anemic appearance fool you. Their small, scraggly leaves and filament stems give no indication of the glorious plants they grow into.
“I remember when I first bought a six-pack of ‘Bright Lights,’ and they were wimpy little things, I wondered if I should even plant them, but I did and then forgot about it,” Kondo said.
“Then I was amazed at how they grew and how beautiful: It looks like somebody painted them! ‘Bright Lights’ definitely adds color in the garden, as well as on the table.”
Kondo casts Swiss chard in starring vegetable roles in his French kitchen garden design. “Vegetable gardens have a lot of green things going on. If I see two greens together that need an accent, I put Swiss chard next to them.”
He also uses the rainbow greens in flowerbeds and borders.
“It’s nice to focus on flowers, but sometimes it’s nice to focus on other things,” he said. “Swiss chard is very architectural. It adds great texture in design, and also the colors are so beautiful on the stems. In a flower garden, it gives nice interest. Sometimes I use it next to edging between beds because it directs pathways and creates definition. It’s something outside out of the box.”
Kondo also fancies Swiss chard in containers: “We tend to use flowery things and soft textures in containers, but Swiss chard is a different plant material,” he said. “Even in a container, it did pretty well.”
This growing season, make room in your vegetable garden, flower bed or containers for Swiss chard – eye candy good enough to eat.
Freelance writer Colleen Smith gardens in central Denver.
Graze or just gaze upon
Even if you don’t enjoy eating greens, exotically decorative Swiss chard deserves a place in your garden because it’s a plant as good to look at as it is to eat.
To prepare a simple, delicious, nutritious side dish, try this: Cut the largest Swiss chard leaves at the base of the stalk. Keep in mind that as is the case with spinach, cooking Swiss chard reduces its volume drastically. Wash and dry the leaves and stalks. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a sauté pan and cook a few cloves of freshly minced garlic until golden. Since the Swiss chard stalks are tougher than the leaves, you may want to cook them for several minutes before adding the leaves. Season with a pinch of fleur de sel or kosher salt and some red pepper flakes. Sauté the chard until tender.
– Colleen Smith
