When you think of garden design, you might think the topic is limited to where you’re going to place new beds or whether you’ll use stone or mulch between them. But there’s so much more that goes into it.
Your garden design might start out as a dream scribbled in a notepad over the winter while you wait for the days to get longer and warmer, but there are so many more facets. For example, it’s all well and good to draw out your garden, but do you know how much it’s going to cost? Will you DIY, or will you get the help of a landscaper?
What about planning your garden beds? Will they be raised beds, or no? Tiered or vertical? Will you require a trellis or an arbor? Are you on a hill? And do you start by picking what you want to grow and design from there? Or should you plan how you want your garden to look and then choose what you want to grow to match?
When growing a food garden, it’s best to start by picking the foods you actually like to cook and eat and design around it. The rest of the answers to these questions you can find in the articles below, like how to space vegetables and herbs, whether vertical gardens are a good idea, and how to design a garden even if all you have is concrete.
In the articles below, we dive into all of these approaches to garden design, and you can learn more about it in our How to Grow a Vegetable Garden: 10 Things Every Gardener Need to Know Before Starting a Food Garden freebie. Enjoy!
If you’re lucky enough to have a patch of yard to do some gardening, you’ve likely spent some time dreaming up garden designs. If you’re anything like me, that involves graph paper, colored pencils, and a ruler! When thinking about what your garden will look like, think about the types of vegetables you want to grow and their specific needs. I recommend considering enclosed vegetable garden ideas.
Good fences make good neighbors, but can they make good gardens, too? A vegetable garden border fence can accomplish a few different goals all at once. For one, it can keep rabbits and other critters from wreaking havoc on your vegetables.
Is your backyard less of a yard and more of a concrete desert? Or maybe the terrain is too rocky or uneven for you to live out your vegetable garden dreams. There’s no reason to throw in your green-thumb-towel yet! There are lots of options to build a garden bed on concrete. Heck, people use cinder blocks to line gardens, so why not use them to build one? With a little strategy and planning, you can have a vegetable garden in a nontraditional space like a cement patio or walkway. Check out these five ways to prep your space and garden bed before you plant.
Why does it always seem like you spend all winter waiting, wishing, and hoping for spring, then when it arrives, your brain goes into panic mode, and suddenly you have no idea what’s going to go where, or how many of what you’re going to plant? Just me? That’s fine, that’s fine.
It’s usually after the third or fourth big snowstorm that I start sketching out my garden design for the spring. If I’m being extra nerdy, I’ll even bust out the graph paper. My desire to micromanage each square foot of my backyard is outdone only by my desire to save money. This is where recycled materials come in! In garages, basements, and tool sheds across the world, there are gobs of recyclable materials we can use to build a DIY vegetable trellis.
As much as I love harvesting a bowl of sweet peas or enjoying an heirloom tomato right off the vine, part of the fun of gardening is planting raised garden beds. Garden design is where that artistic side comes out. I get to plan how my garden will look, where I want a footpath, and what kinds of raised beds I want.
If you’re like me you’ve exhausted all of your outdoor garden space with fruits, veggies, and herbs and are always looking for a way to maximize garden space. Or maybe you rent your home or apartment and only have a small footprint to work with. In either case, growing vegetables vertically is an excellent strategy. You may opt for a store-bought tower garden, but there are also plenty of ways to craft a DIY tower garden.
Ireland may be known for cabbage, carrots, and potatoes, but there’s much more to an Irish vegetable garden than these staple veggies. Of course, you can do a lot with these three vegetables. I’m thinking about a big pot of stew or roasted veggies or cabbage cooked up with a lot of garlic and some […]
When most people think of gardening, they envision a sprawling area with raised garden beds and trellises and neatly grown lettuces all in a row. However, some of the most beautiful gardens I’ve seen use vertical gardening techniques to grow more upward than outward. But what is vertical gardening?
When designing a vegetable garden, it’s a good idea to figure out which part of your yard receives the longest and most consistent light. Might as well get in a bit of sunbathing and call it “research,” right? For some, as luck would have it, the most sun-filled section of your yard will be the least conducive to growing. Sometimes your sunny spot is on concrete or pavement. Other times, you may find the sunniest area in your yard to be on a hillside or sloped land. You can work with that!
