The Potager

A Potager is not just a veggie garden, but a blend of flowers, herbs, and vegetables all grown together with the end goal of growing a beautiful looking garden that is provides food for the heart and the soul, as well as the larder.

This hodge podge planting means you not only have an amazing looking garden, but also a very organic, healthier, thriving one. The herbs and flowers bring in beneficial insects and pollinators, improve soil quality, and make for better tasting vegetables, too. It is the greatest form of companion planting, both pretty and productive.

The main garden consists of 7 raised beds, 40 feet long and four feet wide. This area is fenced in to keep out my 200 lb garden helpers, who love to dig up their own carrots and lie on the garden beds.

An additional 8 raised beds of various sizes are scattered about the property. One huge bed for garlic, two for strawberries, one for roses, and the others tend to change from year to year.

Wedding flower beds

This past summer, several of the beds held late summer flowers of all sorts, in hues of white, cream, lavender and purple for my daughter's wedding. The bees loved it, as did I.

Having a constant supply of gorgeous blooms for vases or gifting at any time, was so wonderful that I have decided to incorporate several cutting beds into all my annual garden plans from now on.

The garden changes from year to year, with only the perennials remaining a constant. Each year I start with a new plan, new plants, new ideas. A bit of it is accredited to crop rotation, while the rest is just a gardener's right to change her mind... over and over again ; )

It also changes from season to season. Here on the island, we are lucky as we can grow vegetables year round.

Bosc pears from our little tree

To me, the entire acreage is my potager, and so I incorporate  edibles into ornamental garden beds throughout the property. While the front yard is still very much a work in progress, all beds carry a hodge podge assortment of plants, both edible and ornamental. We have both fruiting and flowering trees, blueberries amid roses, herbs and flowers as perennial border plants, fruits, veggies and berries tucked in everywhere.

Our 'wee orchard' is planted along the fence line, amongst the climbing roses, with apple, pear, and cherry trees, one lovely fig, and assorted small fruited shrubs of blueberries, currants, raspberries and more. If we eat it, I grow it.

  Ruby Tuesday loves carrots 

The entire family loves the kitchen garden!