The magazine Garden Gate (Jan/Feb '06) has some photos of a nicely done veggie/flower bed (pg 30,31). I bet for things like tomatoes, the issue is picking the right variety and choosing how you'll support it so that it's aesthetically pleasing to you.

I think a lot of foliage veggies do really well mixed in with flowers. The biggest problem I see is with things where you harvest the entire plant to eat (lettuce, garlic, onions, etc) a big hole could be left. The question then becomes what do you do with the hole.

A couple of sources for you - A Year At North Hill (includes descriptions and photos of the vegetable garden created by two noted gardeners/designers) - and The $64 Tomato. I haven't read this one, but there was a big review last week in the N.Y. Times detailing the author's plunge into heavy-duty vegetable gardening on his new farm (he spent something like $15K having someone design and install his raised beds and electric deer fence). After harvesting 19 tomatoes one year he calculated the cost of each at $64. Here's a photo of his vegetable garden. There are also images of ornamental plants accompanying tomatoes, but not much on the site that indicates how everything hangs together. It seems to have worked out for the author though - he may have blown a ton of dough on a frustratingly scanty harvest, but he'll likely more than recoup that through the book.

I think you have to decide at the outset what your priorities are - the need to harvest food in bulk to eat fresh and store, for instance, is not very compatible with "wasting" space on ornamentals. The requirements for full sun and immediate accessibility (placing the garden as close as possible to the kitchen and providing ample space for tending and harvesting) are more critical than in a purely ornamental design.

Some vegetable varieties are intrinsically beautiful. "Redbor" kale and cardoon are among those that can hold their own with many purely ornamental plants (they've been players in my subtropical scheme in recent years).

Good solid structures (supports, staking, quality raised beds) are important for best appearance.

pastvast has a good point about harvesting leaving gaps; however you can plan for succession crops of either vegetables or annuals.

I am planning on growing swiss chard (bright lights) two kinds of peppers, cherry and slicing tomatoes, lettuce, scarlet runner beans and eggplant.

Pastvast: Thanks. Lucky or unlucky for me in zone five it will take pretty much the whole season for me to get any yield of anything other than lettuce and chard. I did plant the lettuce and chard up front so when it gets hot I can replace with annuals.

Eric: Thanks for the book tips. I will definitely check them out! I am not looking for any large yields for this bed, it is only about 70 feet by 25 feet at its widest point. I basically want to get my kids enthused about fresh veggies and teach them a bit about what it takes to grow them. My grandparents were farmers and I want my kids to have a sense about all the challenges farmers face. I don't want to completely give up the bed for the project though. Heh

Height is one of the things I am struggling with. Veggies all seem to be around the same size. I was going to put the beans up on maybe a bamboo teepee trellis. Right now the tomatoes are encased in stunning red wall-o-waters. I want to figure out a way to make them nicer looking. They are butt ugly in my opinion. I wonder if I can grow a morning glory in them without killing them?

Since the bed is small, I only will be putting a few of each kind of veggie in the bed. I was originally thinking of just spreading them out amidst the perennials but now I wonder if that will look spotty and it will look neater if I plant groups of veggies together and groups of perennials. The bed is shaped essentially like a giant piece of pie with a twist on one end to keep it from looking too much like a piece of pie. : )

If enjoying agriculture with your children is as important as the yield, you could plant some things as the Native Americans did. Long ago when my children were small we did this -I think it was called "Three Sisters". You make small hills with a few corn seeds planted in each, an acorn-type squash planted at one side, and a runner bean on the other side. The corn grows straight up, and the bean climbs the corn stalk while the squash fills in at the base, shading the ground and conserving water.

It may not look like a garden magazine page, but for us it was a lot of fun!

Annie

Stacy, have you seen the new Potager Gardens forum? It's still a little bit slow - I think it often takes some time for new forums to get up to speed - but it sounds as if it might be just the sort of thing you're looking for.

Here is a link that might be useful: Potager Gardens Forum

Yay! Thanks Avia, I took a look around that forum and it is going to be veyr helpful!