“The geometrical style is always beautiful, useful and always close at hand.”

There are countless distinct types of garden and garden designs to choose from. It is hard to know where to start. If you love to cook with fresh, healthy, and seasonal vegetables, then a French-inspired potager garden might be the perfect choice for you which also give the esthetic look to your front yard. Here in this article, I will tell you how to establish a front yard potager garden.

History of front yard potager:

In the French kitchen potager, gardeners have intermingled vegetables, fruits, flowers, and herbs in view that medieval times. For the French, the potager has always been the country counterpart of the grand chateaux parterres. Potager is more popular than ever in France, an authorities survey taken in 1994 printed that 23% of the fruit and vegetables consumed by using the French are homegrown.

In France today, potager format is typically informal or romantic, which often referred to as the Jardin de cure or curate garden, this intimate and sensual fashion is comparable to that of the English cottage garden, except that it is centered on vegetables alternatively than flowers. Its idea is complicity with nature alternatively than want to impose order, and this trend has been fed by using the developing effect of natural gardening in France over the ultimate twenty years.

Purpose of front yard potager:

The purpose of the potager garden is to eat year-round or as close to year-round as possible from your garden. Moreover, their esthetic look is also being a place of beauty and enjoyment for all the senses. To do so, a plant for this garden are chosen for productivity and generally with the plan to eat them fresh. They are not set out in traditional rows, with one variety lumped all together. Instead, the garden is put together in a way that looks pretty while still providing ample food for the household.

Steps to establish front yard potager:

There are certain steps that you have to follow to form front yard potager.

Make a layout plan:

First, you have to make a blueprint of front yard potager, how it looks like on a paper. The shape for the bed themselves can be varied in the form of a square, triangular, L-shaped, or even cross-shaped and the possibilities for the pattern within are just about limitless. Forget about traditional rows and let your ideas fly like diagonals, zigzags, and circles all perform well and checkboard patterns can look quite striking. Formal geometric and symmetrical designs help to make a way of order and therefore the gardens of the French renaissance provide a selected wealth of design ideas during this style. Celtic patterns may be a useful place to begin too, but try to make them look complicated. Simple is best, particularly during a compact space. 

Do not overlook the non-planting components of the garden, the path can be made of just about any material like gravel, brick, and bark all look good and are fairly required low maintenance. Plant supports, plant pots, rainwater barrels, and composters can all be attractive too and need no cost to a fortune. Recycled and hand-made products have a charm all of their own and instead of hiding them away at the back of the shed.

Of course, the simplest thing about a few potagers is that the majority of the crops must be rotated annually, so each year you get the fun of making a replacement design. A well-planned potager garden is bound to please not only the attention but the taste buds too.

Selection of right location:

Ideally, a potager garden should be visible from your window so that you can enjoy it even while indoors. It should be attached to the front side of your home so that it is convenient and easily accessible. Moreover, it would enhance the look of your home.

Ensure the access of sunlight:

Most plants need 6-8 hours of sunlight to flourish. If the ideal location does not get adequate sunlight, then you will need to stick with a less traditional potager garden and plant it elsewhere. After all, if the plant does not get much sunlight, you would not have much of a garden.

Make an enclosure:

An enclosure is an important factor of a potager garden because it helps to reign it in. you can have a natural enclosure, such as boxwood, climbing plants, or raspberries. You can additionally have an unnatural one such as part of a fence or your residence wall. An enclosure will also help to keep hungry animals from munching on your plants.

Raised beds:

Most gardens do not have the right kind of soil for growing flowers, herbs, and vegetables until your soil has been amended. Raised garden beds are the best solution for this. You can create simple gardening mounds. You can also construct massive planters out of wood, or bricks and then fill them with soil instead. Keep the raised garden beds not greater than 4 ft. this way you will be able to reach the center while harvesting.

You will need to fill the raised garden beds with well-drained loamy soil, especially if you are growing vegetables. Your garden beds do not have to be rectangular or square. They can be oval, round, or even L-shaped.

Make appropriate pathways:

This will enable you to go through your garden except trampling your fruits, herbs, and vegetables. Something around 3 ft wide would be ideal. This way you can push a wheelbarrow down for transporting your harvest, soil mulching. You can make pathways of anything you want including bark, bricks, gravel, or stepping stones.

Adding some ornaments:

Items such as trellises, benches, garden orbs, and birdbaths will help add color to your garden at some stage in the winter season when hardly anything grows. You can additionally add some ornamental evergreens, such as artfully trimmed boxwood shrubs or topiaries to your garden. This way there will be at least something green in your garden when the entire thing else had died.

Focal point:

Potager garden name indicate that it is all about beauty, most of them have a focus. This is a point where you can get creative. The focal point is the center of your garden. It can be as simple as four raised garden beds, too as ornate as a fountain or a fruit tree. There are many other wonderful options to decide on from like Set out a birth bath or decorative garden pedestal as a pollinator pit stop, laden with overripe fruit, or salted sponges. This can be an excellent thanking to creating beauty while also providing food, water, and a resting spot for pollinators which in return ultimately help the grower.

The esthetic look of the garden:

Beauty and functionality are harmonious with a conventional potager garden style. Play with plant colors and textures, taking note to feature a range of fruits, flowers, and foliage. This can facilitate you to create a chic space that has something for all the senses. Plant ornamental or perennial plants that add textures or color with the edible ones that are also brightly colored.

Overall layout:

Most potager gardens are laid out in a grid-like pattern with four raised garden beds. You do not stick yourself to this way, you can get creative. Popular garden patterns include spirals and wagon wheels.

Selection of plants:

Choose a variety of vegetables:

Vegetables are great not solely for filling your tummy, but also for adding color to your garden. Start with vegetables that you eat most often, then add some fresh ones. Instead of going on with simple commonly used varieties, also adding some non-standard ones as well. Such as purple broccoli, white pumpkin, or striped tomato.

Beans and Peas are vertical growers and great for adding a top to your garden. Fleshy fruits ad vegetables such as peppers, pumpkins, squashes, and tomatoes are incredible for adding splashes of coloration to your garden.

Do not overlook the salads. Lettuce, kale, and spinach will add no longer solely texture, however additionally some color. Root vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, and radishes, do not add much color to your garden but they will give worth at the time of harvest.

Selection of herbs:

Herbs not only add flavor to your food, but some also put forth lovely plants as well. Grow herbs that you use often in your cooking. If you do not use many, splendid choices include basil, cilantro, coriander, mint, oregano, and parsley. Try some large shrubby herbs as well such as lavender and rosemary. Some herbs are an aggressive grower and can easily overgrow your garden if you are not careful. It would possibly be the right concept to rein these in with steel borders or plant them separately.

Flower selection:

Flowers are a key function in a potager garden. They add color and attract pollinators for your fruits, herbs, and vegetables. Choose a flower that blooms at a different time of a year. This way there will usually be some color in your garden. Also add some edible flowers such as borage, chamomile, lavender, marigold, rose, and violet. Side by side also considers some climbing flowers. They are a glorious way to add color to your garden walls. Noble choices include roses, morning glories, and sweet peas.

Don’t underestimate vertical growers:

While designing the garden, most growers tend to focus only on what is on the ground. This leads to a very low garden. You can make your garden look large and more interesting by adding vertical grower plants. They include small fruit trees, climbing plants, and large shrubs. They also include plants that need support such as tepees, towers, and trellises.

Great shrubs include berry shrubs, such as blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, and elderberry. There are lots of small varieties of trees suitable for small gardens, including lemon and lime.

Selection of plant according to Agro climate zone:

The plant that thrives in your climate will be easier to grow and will provide better crops. Most local nurseries will carry plants that can grow in your location, but be sure to research your local climate before purchasing plants or seeds.

Plant arrangement:

Start four garden bed:

A standard potager garden will have at least 4 garden beds, that organized in a grid-like pattern along with paths in between. Sketch out four raised garden beds on a paper sheet then make layout according to it.

Add border and color through flowering plant:

Fill the middle of your garden bed with a focal fruit or vegetable, then plant flowering plants all around them. For example, plant a row of cabbages, cauliflowers, and broccoli down the center of your planter, then also add short filler vegetation around the borders such as alyssum, violets or pansies. You do not have to plant in straight rows, try diagonals, zigzags, spirals or rings.

Grouping plant by colors:

This will make your garden seem to be neater and more harmonious. For example, you may want to plant orange/yellow heirloom tomatoes and yellow squash in the equal bed alongside some marigolds. You should additionally plant violets and lavender alongside eggplants and purple cabbage.

Customized with texture color:

If harmony and organization do not appeal to you, try contrast schemes instead. Plant oranges and yellows together. Play around with round and jagged shapes, fuzzy and shiny, frilled, and lacy for example Lacy, feathery carrot leaves work great alongside the frilly leaves of lettuce and kale. Thin and straight chives work well alongside soft, oval, and fuzzy sage.

Use vertical grower along the garden walls:

A potager garden needs an enclosure. Unless you already have a natural enclosure. You can use any shrub, or you will probably be stuck with a fence or house wall. This would not be very interesting to look at. Instead, plant some of your vertical growers such as berry shrubs, small fruit trees, or climbing roses along your wall or fence.

Do not forget about the space at the base of your fruit trees. Plant some strawberries, herbs or flower at their base.

Hopefully, through this article, you will be able to develop a front yard potager garden effectively. Get more info on front yard potager garden on growfoodguide.com