Easy ornamental veg for my flower bed

[Mitzi]

The bed is small. When I'm not there, in my imagination it is huge. In reality it's probably only about 6 foot by 12 foot; maybe slightly longer. It has some established shrubs behind it. My overall idea is a cottage garden / potager kind of thing but mainly things that will take care of themselves most of the time (perennials and self-seeding annuals.) It's east facing so gets morning and mid day sun in summer but is shaded in the afternoon / evening. It gets no sun at all in winter. The soil is acid clay but is fairly decent in this bed.

Angelica and cardoons are on my "possibles" grow list for the future but not for this year. I'm happy to have a few big architectural plants to contrast the fluffy stuff.

[Mitzi]

A huge thank you to Scarlet who has sent me a "care package" of seedlings for my new bed consisting of chard, dahlias, cosmos, shoo fly plant and some that are a mystery. I have potted them up but we're forecast frost on Friday so I'm not putting them out yet.

The bed is longer than 12 foot; probably 15 or more. However at its narrowest it's only about 4 foot wide but the width does vary due to it encompassing what was an "island" in the lawn. The island is already planted with hardy geraniums, though.