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!
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.
Tell me, fellow gardener… if you buy a square of onion sprouts at the gardening supply shack, do you plant each little tiny bulb one by one, or do you bunch them? When you plant carrots, do you space your seeds apart, or do you just sprinkle and see what happens?
I’ll admit that writing about the different types of beans to grow in your garden is no easy task. You could probably write an entire Ph.D. thesis on beans if you were so inclined. There are hundreds of bean varieties, and within that, there are at least six types of bean plants.
Every time I use fresh herbs in a recipe, I say out loud (sometimes to no one in particular), “It’s the fresh herbs that make this dish!” There’s no substitution. Don’t get me wrong, I still use my dried herbs when I have to, but when I want a dish to be really special, I reach for the fresh herbs. Before I get into the details of how to create a living wall herb garden in your home, let me share my herb-growing journey.
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.
Subterranean greenhouse, underground greenhouse, deep winter greenhouse, or Walipini. If you want to grow vegetables throughout the year, this might be your go-to. “Walipini” means, “place of warmth” and comes from the indigenous Aymara people in the Altiplano regions of Peru and Bolivia. This in-ground greenhouse allows farmers to grow despite harsh climate conditions and […]
I love when I can get a two-for-one deal when it comes to gardening, especially when the deal is on back-breaking labor! If you’re like me, then I think you’ll be particularly interested in keyhole gardens. Maybe you’ve heard of a keyhole garden, but just aren’t sure what it is. Or perhaps the concept is […]
Screens are a wonderful thing, are they not? Your screen door can let in sunlight and a nice summer breeze while it keeps out the flies and mosquitoes. A screen can help you clean your vegetables, allowing dirt to wash off while your veggies stay in place. And a vegetable garden screen? It can be […]
Of the many cool things about gardening, one of my favorites is how truly accessible it can be. You don’t have to have acres of land or even a big backyard to enjoy the benefits of fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables from your own garden. In fact, you can grow a LOT of veggies. It’s […]
I’ll be the first to admit that when I’m thinking about how to design a vegetable garden, my first thoughts are about the vegetables I want to grow. If time and space and reality weren’t issues, I’d probably have a large heated greenhouse, endless rows of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, rooms full of herbs, and entire […]
