A Potager Garden in My Future – The Garden Part 1

After Christmas, my thoughts are consumed by the garden. Hands down it’s my favorite thing we do all year. It’s a family endeavor at our house. From planning, planting, picking, eating, and then cleaning up at the end of the season — we do it as a family. We’ve had a garden for a few years and I’ve noticed every year it’s different. The tomatoes did well this year and didn’t last year or the peppers did great last year but this year the bunnies ate them (Or a small child ran one over with her 4-wheeler haha). Most of the change each year is due to factors beyond our control. But this year our garden is going to be different and it’s because we are intentionally changing it! We are turning our typical garden plot into a Potager Garden, also known as a Kitchen Garden.

I was dreaming about a potager garden before I even know what it was. I dreamt of multiple beds, fences, trellises, a table and/or a bench and walking paths throughout the garden. In my dreams it’s almost its own room in the yard. Can you imagine all this with a cobblestone fence around the perimeter?! Although the garden is changing, a cobblestone fence is not happening! haha. I also dreamt of more than just vegetables in the garden. I wanted fruit, fruit trees, herbs and flowers. A one-stop-shop for getting whatever I needed to prepare a meal.

What is a potager/kitchen garden?

At this point, you still might be thinking, “Great! But what is a potager/kitchen garden?” Well I’m glad you asked. Potager is French and is pronounced pow·tuh·jei. It’s an ornamental kitchen garden that contains herbs, flowers, vegetables, and fruit. The goal is that the garden provides food but in an aesthetically pleasing design. A potager garden will have short/low plants as well as tall plants, such as fruit trees and sunflowers, or plants that grow up a trellis intermingled throughout. My favorite part about the design of a potager garden is there’s no right or wrong way to do it. It’s all about trial and error. Grouping companion plants together, getting the beds into a good rotation and designing an entire garden space that simply draws you in and invites you to sit awhile.

Our Garden Plans

Starting small is important for this project. I have a terrible habit of trying to do way too much way too fast. This ultimately results in burn out and an inability to enjoy what I’ve worked so hard doing. So, this year I am intentionally starting small and as the years pass I’ll add new features and see how the garden transforms and takes shape.

This by far has been the most fun I’ve ever had planning my garden. Justin and I created a layout that incorporated the small apple orchard we planted about 2 years ago (courtesy of Justins’ aunt and uncle. Thank you!). After we finished our measurements and sketches on paper we began working on the layout in Google Sketch Up. This layout is subject to change since we are going slow and steady. I’m a woman after all! And a woman with 1,000 new ideas a day no less haha. But here it is!

Fruit

The final garden has grapes climbing up a trellis in one corner. It has strawberries cascading down our raised strawberry bed and blueberry and raspberry bushes grouped together at one edge of the garden creating a small hedge. It also has apple and peach trees that are scattered through the walking paths. This is significantly different from the current situation.

Currently, our strawberries and blueberries are a distance from the trees, so we are going to attempt to move them. Honestly since we planted them, our strawberries have really struggled because we didn’t properly protect the bed from grass growing up and choking out the strawberries. Moving them will give us a chance to prevent this from happening again. Lesson learned!

Vegetables

We will have many vegetables, which we will rotate through the different garden beds to ensure we are replenishing the soil each year. (Did you know, beans are good for putting nitrogen back into the soil? A pretty cool bit I learned this year!) We will fill the vegetable beds with cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beets, squash, sweetcorn, pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, beans, and onions. If you look up a potager garden you’ll see they often have a huge variety of vegetables, but we are going slow and steady here!

Herbs

It will also have herbs galore! Some I’ve never even heard of: borage, hyssop, and comfrey. But don’t fret, we will have some of the most common culinary herbs such as basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, chives, and cilantro. I’m discovering that many herbs are great for putting nutrients back into the soil and for repelling insects that would otherwise look to destroy our plants. Until now, I’ve kept my herbs on the deck and in the house. But I’m excited to see if these herbs are as wonderful in the garden as they seem.

Flowers

Finally we will be adding flowers to the garden. Sunflowers, marigolds, zinnia’s, rhododendrons, nasturtium and some wildflowers. Flowers can be very good companion plants to help the fruit and veggies produce more and be better protected from bugs. They also help attract good bugs and pollinators. Until this year we’ve always left our flowers to the flower beds. No mixing. But I love the idea of combining the flowers with fruits and veggies. Honestly that desire is how I discovered a potager garden. I told Justin I wanted to add flowers to the vegetable garden this year. Before I knew it, my initial thought of simply adding flowers to the perimeter of the current plot exploded into a completely new vision.

Furniture

The other piece I want to add to this garden is a table. Nothing fancy. Just an old farm table that can endure the weather. I envision going to the garden with the girls and loading up the basket with that day’s treasures and taking them to the table to survey the harvest.

As I said before, this is the end goal. The goal for our 2020 garden is to change the layout by creating beds between our apple trees, purchasing and planting a few more blueberry bushes, and moving the strawberry bed to the new location. We love supporting local businesses so we plan to purchase the blueberry bushes from The Blueberry Patch. It’s very close to us and we love their blueberries and blueberry donuts!

Keep checking back for updates! I’ll keep you posted as the garden grows. Thanks for stopping by!