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.
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.
An above ground garden is one of my favorite recommendations for folks who want to start gardening but aren’t sure where to begin. For one thing, gardening can be tricky if you don’t have the right space for it and some folks don’t have a large yard to work with. Others may have poor soil quality on their property. Many people have mobility issues preventing them from getting on their hands and knees, and still others can’t keep up with the weeds and pests pervasive at the ground level.
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.
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.
There’s something about a hanging vegetable arbor that turns a garden into a magical hideaway where you can breathe deep and enjoy nature. In a way, I suppose that’s true, too. Once the season is underway, you can stand underneath your arbor and be surrounded by lush greenery and dappled sunshine. I’ve even seen a […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
This is the time of year that always starts to drag for me. The holidays have come and gone. The New Year is upon us. The falling snow has lost some of its novelty. It is just plain old COLD! This is the time of year when I start wondering why I live in New […]
