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!
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?
Garden gnomes, those small, bearded creatures that have been popping up in gardens for centuries, have quite the storied past. But where did these little guys come from? And why are they so darned popular? It all started back in the 19th century, when a German potter named Phillip Griebel began creating garden gnomes as […]
As the days get shorter, the nights get longer, and a heavy frost greets me each morning, I realize it is time to do the thing I dread each year. It is time to say goodbye to my garden. My berries have stopped blooming, my cucumbers have gone away, and even the last pumpkin has […]
There are some not-so-well-hidden secrets about planning your vegetable garden for a good harvest. The thing is, even though they aren’t exactly “secret,” they get skipped over a good bit. To be fair, talking about soil testing isn’t nearly as enthralling as thinking about that late summer harvest of cucumbers and tomatoes. But some extra […]
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 […]
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 […]
For those of you who feel ready to take on a challenge and build a greenhouse from scratch, I applaud you. And for those of you who think this is a terrible idea, I get it. It sounds like an overwhelming task, especially when you think about a fancy greenhouse with panel after panel of […]
Dropping temperatures, frigid nights, and short days can only mean one thing! It’s time to start thinking about how to design a garden layout. Wait! Don’t go! This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. There’s a lot of gardening that happens well before that last frost. Depending on your plans, you might be doing anything […]
What is crop rotation to the home gardener? Like you, I usually think of crop rotation in terms of bigger commercial farms, or even large home gardens. If you have a small backyard plot, or a space where you grow herbs beside your kitchen window, you might wonder what kind of crop rotation advantages really […]
