| Would you like to grow your own fresh | | | | entrance. |
| vegetables at home in a vegetable garden layout | | | | Suggested Plants |
| which is attractive as well as productive? A | | | | The idea is to have plenty of color and interesting |
| potager kitchen garden is a vegetable garden in | | | | textures - colorful frilly lettuces to border the |
| which there is a delightful mix of vegetables, | | | | paths, swiss chard with brightly colored stems, |
| herbs, flowers and perhaps even a fruit tree or | | | | curly blue-green kale, purple sprouting broccoli, red |
| two. Get some ideas here for planning your own | | | | chicory, red-stemmed beetroot, feathery carrots |
| potager design. | | | | (their leaves that is!), runner beans on a tepee |
| Origins | | | | with lovely red flowers and long green pods, |
| The French kitchen garden, called the potager | | | | French climbing beans with green, purple or yellow |
| (pronounced pot-ah-zhay) traditionally provided the | | | | pods, feathery asparagus and colorful fruiting |
| ingredients for potage (soup or vegetable broth). | | | | vegetables such as chili peppers, sweet peppers, |
| In medieval times the monks and nuns used | | | | tomatoes and eggplant. |
| these kitchen gardens to provide flowers for the | | | | Besides the flowers on the vegetables, you may |
| church and vegetables for the inhabitants of the | | | | plant edible flowers, grow flowers for their |
| abbey. Whereas the English cottage garden is a | | | | companion planting properties or for cut flowers. |
| random, haphazard collection of flowers, | | | | Common companion flowers include marigold, |
| vegetables and herbs growing together, these | | | | nasturtium, chamomile and yarrow. |
| potagers were geometric and ordered. | | | | The external barrier could be a hedge of |
| Layout | | | | gooseberries, red currants, blueberries or goji |
| The potager garden may be large or small and is | | | | berries or a combination of all four. Alternatively |
| usually made up of square, rectangular, circular or | | | | you could put up a trellis and plant it with grapes |
| diamond-shaped garden beds arranged in a | | | | or kiwifruit. Make sure to choose varieties which |
| repeating geometric pattern. The plants within the | | | | will do well in your area. Your local garden center |
| beds are also planted in groups or patterns. In a | | | | should be able to help you. Also take care that |
| larger garden, the whole garden may be | | | | the hedge is not so tall so as to cast too much |
| surrounded by a clipped hedge with an arbor for a | | | | shade on your vegetable garden. |
| climbing vine (e.g. passion fruit) to mark the | | | | |