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Potager garden design

Striking the perfect balance between aesthetics and functionality can be a challenging endeavor. This became especially evident to me as I dove into the world of potager garden design. With my permaculture certification in hand and a passion for crafting 3D garden layouts, I found that the timeless beauty of potagers offers both abundant yields and striking visual appeal.

Merging the principles of design with the practicalities of cultivation is no small feat. Drawing from my experience and training, I’ve learned the intricacies of this artful approach to gardening. In this article, we’ll navigate through the essentials of potager garden design, discussing layout choices, plant selection, and design principles, ensuring that by the end, you’re equipped to create a garden that’s both productive and enchanting. Let’s embark on this journey to sculpt a garden space that’s truly a feast for both the palate and the eyes.

Introduction to potager garden design

Potager garden design is the traditional art of arranging plants grown for food in an ornamental manner. Typically, potagers are designed in a French country style, with plants in neat rows that form geometric shapes. Most potagers have short raised garden beds separated by paths made of pea gravel or paving stones. These idyllic kitchen gardens combine beauty and practicality to create a wonderfully productive garden.

French kitchen garden with chives and low stone beds

Potager gardens in the home landscape

Growing your own food in a French kitchen garden is such a wonderful way to learn how to start a vegetable garden. Whether you’re growing vegetables in containers on the patio or in a backyard veggie patch, it will help you connect with your food in a way that buying it at the store just can’t do. Here’s how to get started creating a potager in your home landscape.

Potager with veggies and flowers growing in straight rows
Fancy rows of different lettuces growing

Designing your own potager garden

Design is an important part of a potager. The design should not only be aesthetically pleasing to the gardener but should also be convenient for the chef to harvest from.

Many potager gardens are well defined by perimeter hardscaping. Hardscaping refers to all the non-plant parts of the garden that are constructed, including walls, paths, trellises, and patios. Growing areas are often in raised beds or slightly raised mounds to get the plants up off ground level. The perimeter of the growing area may be edged with wooden boards, bricks, river rocks, or formal stonework.

Paths are used heavily in potager design. Paths between growing areas are often made of durable surfaces such as crushed rocks or gravel (I like pea gravel). The passageways and growing areas of potager gardens are often arranged in a pattern that looks interesting from an aerial point of view.

Also, take advantage of the natural structure of the garden. The shape of the area, surrounding buildings, large trees, and other permanent fixtures should be considered when designing your garden layout.

Designing a French kitchen garden takes some planning. Start by checking out this gallery of potager images to get some inspiration. Then move on to creating your garden plan (grab your free garden planner here). The tips below for growing vegetables, herbs, and fruit in your potager will help you to make your design a success!

“Regardless of style, all well-designed gardens make use of three essential principles – balance, proportion, and repetition – to blend the various parts of the garden into a harmonious whole. Even if your entire gardening effort is focused on edible crops, you can incorporate basic design principles to create a productive and visually attractive garden.”

Rodale’s Basic Organic Gardening: A Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Healthy Garden, by Deborah L. Martin
Nice straight rows of beets and carrots

Vegetable gardening in the potager

Vegetables are the foundation crops of potagers. Choose veggies you love to eat as your crops. Grow your favorite salad greens or smoothie ingredients. Pick veggies your family will eat. Grow edible flowers! If you grow vegetables you love, you’re a lot more likely to stick with the whole vegetable garden thing.

Vegetable gardening for beginners

If you’d like to start with a few common vegetables, here are some easy crops perfect for vegetable gardening for beginners. If you have raised beds, start with these vegetables.

Growing vegetables in containers

You don’t need a yard to grow a garden! It’s just as much fun growing vegetables in containers. If you’re living somewhere without a yard, or it’s too cold to grow anything outdoors right now, try microgreens.

Growing microgreens is the perfect way to get started gardening if you don’t have very much growing experience. It’ll teach you how seeds germinate and sprout, helping you build confidence for when you grow full-size plants! Growing microgreens is the perfect way to start growing vegetables in containers.

French country garden with scarecrow and nasturtiums

Planning for herbs in the potager

The culinary herb garden is another key part of the potager. A good potager is filled with fresh organic herbs that complement the vegetables in the garden as well as favorite family recipes.

Herb plants for the potager

There are numerous herb plants to add to your herb garden. Some are common culinary herbs that can be picked up as fully-grown herb plants at the grocery store. Others are a bit harder to find and must be grown from seed. Here is a big list of common culinary herb plants and their preferred growing conditions.

One of my favorite herb plants to grow is garlic! Garlic can be grown from plump organic garlic cloves from the grocery store, or you can order specialty seed garlic for planting. Homegrown organic garlic is one of the most rewarding herb plants to grow! Plus, homegrown garlic makes the best garlic powder. Who knew?

Fan and espaliered fruit trees against wall
Fan and espaliered fruit trees against a wall

Fruit gardening

Fruit gardens are so much fun! Most fruit gardens focus on delicious perennial plants that produce yummy fruit year after year. It may take a few years for plants to become established, but once they do, you’ll be SO glad you planted them. Here are a few ways to get your fruit garden started:

Fruit trees for the edible garden

Fruit trees are under-utilized in urban settings and potager plots. There are fruits that will grow easily in most temperate climates and environmental conditions. Where I live, plum and apple trees grow wild!

What kind of fruit trees love growing in your climate? Do some research about fruiting trees that grow well where you live. A nice small fruit tree or two can provide a year-round focal point in your potager garden design while also creating an abundance of sweet fruit once each year.

Berries for edible gardens

While you’re planting fruit, why not try growing some berries in your fruit garden? Both strawberries and blueberries are small plants that are easy to tuck into the garden. Every year I am so glad that I have strawberries to snack on! My faves are the little French ‘Mignonette’ alpine strawberries that I grow.

Ornamental plants

Edible and ornamental plants work well together. Ornamentals serve as much more than mere aesthetic accessories. They are integral components that breathe life, color, and a sense of artistry into these functional spaces. Blending the practicality of vegetable cultivation with the visual appeal of ornamentals creates a harmonious symphony of form and function.

These decorative specimens, whether they be vibrant flowers, textured grasses, or even sculptural shrubs, play a pivotal role in delineating spaces, attracting beneficial pollinators, and offering contrasting hues and shapes against the more structured lines of vegetable beds. The intentional incorporation of ornamentals not only enhances the garden’s beauty but also elevates the sensory experience, making potager gardens a delightful intersection of utility and art.

Terraced low wooden raised garden beds growing greens in spring

References

Mary Jane Duford
Mary Jane Duford

Mary Jane Duford is a quintessential Canadian gardener. An engineer by trade, she tends to an ever-expanding collection of plants. In her world, laughter blooms as freely as her flowers, and every plant is raised with a dash of Canadian grit.

Mary Jane is a certified Master Gardener and also holds a Permaculture Design Certificate. She's also a proud mom of three, teaching her little sprouts the crucial difference between a garden friend and foe.

When she's not playing in the dirt, Mary Jane revels in her love for Taylor Swift, Gilmore Girls, ice hockey, and the surprisingly soothing sounds of bluegrass covers of classic hip-hop songs. She invites you to join her garden party, a place where you can share in the joy of growing and where every day is a new opportunity to find the perfect spot for yet another plant.

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