Alpine Strawberries - Edible Edging for Your Flower Bed

Alpine strawberries, Fragaria vesca, is a form of strawberry that grows wild in Europe, Asia and both North and South America. This is the diminutive strawberry you'll pay heavily for in a nice French restaurant, where they will be called fraise de bois. The berries are small and fragile, so they are almost impossible to grow and ship commercially, but they are easy to grow in your garden and make a most attractive edging plant for the front of your flower border.

Alpine strawberries have more intense strawberry flavor than the larger, commercially grown berries you find in the grocery store. They are heavenly whether eaten out in the garden, or in a bowl under a splash of heavy cream.

Because the alpine strawberry grows in woodland settings in the wild, it can be grown in light shade in your garden. Alpine strawberries do not form runners like garden strawberries, but they will slowly increase in size. A mature plant may be several feet wide, and up to 12 inches high. The fruits will continue to ripen all summer, from June to October. Most will bear red fruit, but some named varieties have white berries that are less interesting to birds. Some are said to have a taste that contains a hint of pineapple.

The fastest way to get your alpine strawberries started is to buy plants at the nursery, but these strawberries are easy to grow from seed. Transplant them into good garden soil, and water them regularly. The leaves are very attractive, and the small white flowers are usually held high above the mound of leaves. The plants will continue to come back every year if you take good care of them. They can be divided in the spring to get more plants, and are relatively pest free, although slugs and birds do like to eat the fruit.

If you have plenty of fruit, you can make them up into a very flavorful strawberry jam, but if you have children it is unlikely that you will eve have enough. The young leaves can supposedly be added to salads or soups, although I've never tried eating the leaves myself. And you can use the leaves to make an herbal tea. Herbalists use the leaves and fruit as a diuretic, laxative and tonic, and some say that the fruit will help reduce fevers. Tea made from the leaves has been used externally to treat sunburns, and the fruit is said to contain a natural bleach that makes a good tooth whitener.

You can find plants at many local nurseries and online, and many seed companies sell alpine strawberry seeds. Since the alpines don't set runners, you can even grow them in a pot on your patio. For even more strawberry interest, grow a few of their cousins, the musk strawberries, too.