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GARDENS:THERE USED TO BE an idea that vegetables were utilitarian-looking, and that they should be hidden away in the back garden, along with various unmentionable items of clothing on the washing line. To my mind, however, all vegetables are decent, fine-looking things. Instead of being banished out of sight, they should be celebrated by being given a prime position (and then eaten), writes JANE POWERS

Many are boldly shaped and beautifully coloured (leeks and ruby chard, to mention just two), and can fill the same role that is traditionally played by annual bedding. I know that not everyone will agree with me on this one, but I do happen to be in some very good company. If you’ve been to Château de Villandry in the Loire valley, you will have seen the idea of edibles as ornamentals carried to the extreme. There, vegetables are neatly enclosed in sharply geometrical, box-edged beds, so that they make a multicoloured patchwork quilt. It’s rather a large quilt: its ribbed and bobbled fabric stretches over three acres (1.25 hectares), and contains more than 50,000 plants of 40 varieties of kitchen produce.