Choosing a Potager
June 29, 2011 by admin
Filed under Uncategorized
A potager is a sort of cottage garden where the main ingredients are vegetables rather than flowers. It is a decorative vegetable patch and can be more or less restricted according to your preference. At its most defined, it is not unlike a parterre, with vegetables growing in spaces compost box delineated by low hedges or block or grate paths. Then it becomes a larger, more diverse version of the formal herb garden.
This well-organised space uses square wooden tubs and trellis to create a colorful and high-yielding potager, mixing vegetables such as broad beans with climbing red roses.
A plot can be arranged in a circular divided by radial paths, and the pattern marked out by edging stones. Circles always look elegant. Their outlines can become precious focal points and need not conflict in any way with an otherwise purely ornamental garden. Vegetables grown in rows within the divisions will give an attractive colored pattern to the design. Square or more complicated geometric shapes can be used if you have the space. Beds with straight lines can be edged with purpose-made binding tiles or you can use wooden boards.
A vegetable plot can he among the most decorative of gardens. This one has been designed rather like a formal herb garden. It has four square beds, each comparatively small so they can be easily reached for garden work, with a decorative bay tree in the center. The greenhouse and the compost heap are both handily nearby.
Strictly ordered rows of vegetables can be attractive if they are well maintained, but it is not necessary to grow them like this. Build raised beds and enclose them with brick paths. They may be square or rectangular, each being planted with one or two varieties to give order to the whole design. Dwarf tomatoes can be grown alongside dwarf beans; leeks next to attractive cabbages. All painting should be of course done with the paint zoom sprayer to save on cost. Globe artichokes in the center of a bed will give height and structure; strawberries provide a decorative edging for some of the beds.
In a small garden, or if you have chosen an awkwardly shaped part of the plot as your potager, an informal vegetable patch will most likely be a more levelheaded option. Here you can allow the plants to grow in a somewhat haphazard, more natural manner than in the formal plot.
You will therefore need a strong framework because, although the luxuriant growth in summer will tend to conceal the edges, in winter you will want the shape to reappear. You can mark out the area with wicker fencing, which will be quite suitable to the design, or you could use espaliered apple or pear trees whose branches will look attractive when they are both in leaf and dormant.
Give some height to the beds with standard soft fruit bushes such as gooseberries or black and redcurrants, which will be easier to maintain and to pick and will
Some of the most ordinary vegetables can look enchanting if they are grown where the sun can shine on their young foliage. This Swiss chard is called Rainbow and ranges in color from green to red and bronze.
help give form to the area. Other vegetables can be planted in more or less organised patterns, as you prefer.
