violas are my favorite, pansies are nice, I also like stock, cyclamin and calendula are pretty too I know there are others but I'm drawing a blank. but don't plant until it gets cooler.

I visited a potager or ornamental vegtable garden at Stonecrop garden in Cold Spring, NY this past summer. I was much impressed by one bed consisting solely of cole crops: purple, red, black and green kale, purple and green kohlrabi, red and green cabbages, Brussels sprouts (do you know you can get these in red?), cauliflower. The kale was used in the center of the bed with the lower growing veggies around it. But they also had beds with red and yellow beets, frilly mustard greens and collards, red flowered, purple flowered and pink flowered runner beans on teepees, purple, yellow and green bush beans - and rows of many colored lettuce. One of the students was setting out rows of lettuce plants to replace the ones already harvested and she had flats in several colors. Dill and parsley are also very ornamental. And there were red and green scallions along with several kinds of onions. You can visit the garden and the potager at www.stonecrop.org

Actually gus isn't all that tolerant of other crops or of weeds or just about anything else simply because its roots are almost invasive and its crown is so big and hungry and thirsty. A 3 year old crown can be as much as 6-8" in diameter so roots from anything else are quickly stunted and harvesting the other crops damages the gus crowns. So as a perennial crop, it is not usually inter-planted with anything and does best in own bed and all its own nutrients. While other crops can perhaps benefit from having gus planted nearby, gus would just as soon be alone. ;) Dave

Hi Patricia, might require higher altitude than you´re at. Understand it´s locally called "Sangriento" in Ecuador but that´s all I´ve found so far.