Hi,

Sounds like you want a really pretty garden space. Try this forum:

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/potager/

Here is a link that might be useful: Potager Forum Garden Web

Take a 14'x14' spot
Draw a plus sign on it (By just walking around and on plus sign walkways you can reach everything.
Plant short ones on EAST/SOUTHEAST and tall ones on WEST?NORTHWEST sides. Plant tall ones in the center of each square, shorter ones toward the edges.
This is an ergonomic square-foot gardening.

Alternative:
Same as above but 20' x 20' with a round garden of 6ft dia. at the center(Herebs Garden? mabe?)

Call it whatever you want! ;) I call mine a kitchen garden (because logically enough, it's outside the kitchen door), and I love spending time out there because it's beautiful as well as functional. A little overgrown from lack of time, but still pretty to me!

As I understand it, the term "potager" just refers to a garden that is a mix of edibles and ornamentals, meant to be practical but look pretty doing it. It doesn't have to include raised beds, although it usually would have beds and paths defined somehow because brick or stone is prettier than dirt =) So your garden would fit.

There are tons of beautiful flowers/vegetables/herbs that work well in the vegetable garden... "Sweet Pickle" or "Purple Tiger" peppers (and there are many more); heirloom tomatoes and eggplant (so many colors, striped or not); Trionfo Violetto beans are gorgeous--deep purple beans, lavender flowers, and leaves with a purple tint; runner beans have extravagant red, white, salmon, or bicolor flowers; nasturtiums have beautiful leaves and flowers which are also edible, and keep pests away; tons of beautiful, unusual herbs which are good companions for veggies as well... and you can interplant "normal" vegetables like squash and carrots to get an interesting mix of leaf patterns and textures.

If you're planting strawberries or raspberries, make sure you put them in a spot where you can contain them!

You can also add beauty and structure with pretty plant supports, trellises, arches... you can find supports made of willow, lattice, brightly-enameled metal, or you can repurpose fallen tree branches or old furniture which is kind of fun...

Just approach the design of your vegetable beds like you would a flower bed, taking into account colors, textures, plant size, etc... you can do better than "somewhat attractive"!

Wow, didn't mean to write a book... hope some of it gives you ideas! =)

Lori

I referenced this website a ton when I was planning out my garden:

Here is a link that might be useful: Companion Planting

You might enjoy this article

Here is a link that might be useful: She wanted one too

Thank you all for the wonderful ideas! You've given me a lot to consider. I think I like the term kitchen garden (not that the name really matters) but it's not as fancy as a potager, but more attractive than rows of vegetables.

I saw a very pretty garden on the potager website that was more devoted to flowers than vegetables, but I liked the way the beds were designed. It did have a picket fence :) but I still liked it very much.

Having the different types of vegetables, with all the colorful varieties (I love the beans Lori mentioned) sound like a lot of fun. I also like the idea of edible flowers.

Thank you all for your help and I'll keep checking in with this forum to get good ideas!

p.s. This forum is a lot busier than the potager forum.
You say tom-AY-to,
I say tom-AH-to...

it all means great eats from your veggie patch, no matter how aesthetically pleasing you do or don't make it.

I like to bounce between here and the square-foot gardening forum, and found that my veggie patch ended up being more of a 'hybrid' this year than sticking to one style.

I like my patch to be "inviting" but I don't need it to be fancy-schmancy. A little organization went a long way this year to make my garden aesthetically pleasing as well as staying sorta 'traditional' and sorta 'square foot' planted for volume/production.

Take ideas from many places, and incorporate what you like. Your garden will turn out great, and you'll figure out also what you don't like in order to change it up next season.

The word "potager" is simply from a french term for soup: "potage". The original potagers were cultivated by monks outside their small cottages in monasteries. The gardens supplied the kitchen (or soup pot) with vegetables AND fruits AND cooking Herbs. They also incorporated flowers as decorations for the church altars and medicinal herbs for their use in treating their own illnesses or the illnesses of the people they served.

Because of limited space, potagers were gardened intensively, often, but not always in raised beds, but usually with plants spaced closely (a la Square Foot gardening). The beds were made narrow, so that the gardener could stand in the pathway and reach into the bed to work, thus avoiding walking on the bed and compacting the soil. These days, three foot paths are recommended so that a wheelbarrow can be accomodated. (Maybe then too.)

I built a potager this year. I have nine raised beds edged with decorative concrete retainers. Each bed is 8 feet long and 3 1/2 feet wide. I am five feet nine inches tall, so this is the most comfortable width for me. I can work on a bed from all four sides.

I absolutely love this gardening method. It lends itself to staggered planting and year round planting so well. I can pull out an old crop, amend and work the soil, replant and mulch a bed in about an hour and a half.

This being my first year, I have learned alot from mistakes, of course. The one problem I am still puzzling over is the incorporation of ornamentals into the beds. Perennial plants are not so good. They are in the way when it's time to re-work a bed. Ditto for annuals. My poor black pearl peppers have been dug up and replanted three times since March! I think that next summer, I may leave out the flowers, except as edgers, and even then, only plant with tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant since these tend to grow and produce for most of the summer.

I have been planning my winter garden this week and am excited that I may be able to get lots of color and beauty from planting in patterns using edible crops. So many brassicas and lettuces have colorful leaves, you see.

Anyway...I have also learned that if you want design ideas, go to the Potager forum. If you need help growing vegetables, come here or to the Tomato Forum. And if you are trying to figure out how to space and trellis plants in intensively planted beds, go to the Square Foot Garden forum. Nice folks in all places.

I bet this was more than you really wanted to know! :)

I get flowers in my vegetable garden by not pulling volunteers. The culprits are mainly annual poppies, calendula, and hollyhocks. Generally, I just keep them from directly competing with the veggies. It didn't work for the hollyhocks -- six to eight feet high and shading the carrots :(

Personally, I've decided I have a cottage garden. I planted and that's how it turned out. :)

Do what you need to for your vegetable/flower/soil/shade. There is no need to plant a particular type of garden. Double dig for parsnips, companion plant tomatoes, put flowers were you want them. It is your garden.

No, it's not more than I wanted to know :) I really need some ideas, because I tried a few small vegetable beds this year, just to see what grows well in my area. We have a very short, but often hot growing season. I don't think perennials would work in the bed, but annual flowers don't seem to be a problem. By the time I'm going to be pulling out vegetables, I think it will be frost. Our frost free season is from early June to late August (early September if I'm lucky). We usually have a severe frost by mid-September. In the summer, most of July and August is in the 80's and 90's, so we have a short spring and a too short, but beautiful autumn.

Back to the garden, I think 3 1/2 foot wide beds sounds just right. I could probably do four, but reaching over other plants, I'd probably end up stepping in the bed. Everyone I've talked to says do raised beds, you have clay soil. However, I also have horses, so I have a lot of aged manure. I threw some in my garden bed (about 1/2 manure, 1/2 clay) dug it under and ended up with really nice soil.

You would think I'd have tons of room for my garden, but between the horse corral, their pasture and the series of gentle hills down to the creek, I have very little level area, with good sun and easy access to water.

I'm thinking about trying a small potager next to the fairy garden for my nieces, kind of incorporate all the fun little veggies that they might want to try. Then, I might put a more "serious" garden on the other side of the house. I need some space for corn, pumpkins and melons, as well as the usual pole beans, tomatoes and broccoli. I also want to edge the larger garden with purple raspberries and blueberries.

By asking all my nieces and nephews(and I have a lot of them) what they would like to include, I seem to have ended up with a lot more variety than I originally imagined. I did tell them they would have to help with the garden if they want to eat the food :)

Sorry about MY long response, but thank you all for the input. I really appreciate it!

Wow, that is a short growing season! You obviously won't have to worry about pulling and replanting. That should make it easier.
I wish I could show you pictures of my garden. It is built on a hillside. My brother has a garden blog and he is supposed to be posting some pictures of my beds soon along with an article on how I built them. They are terraced: built right on the slope with the higher side just one block deep and the lower side 3 or 4 blocks deep. They look so nice and make it much much easier to work on that slope. I tell you this to encourage you to think about your hillsides. They might be your answer.

I have clay soil too: very sticky and heavy. I have tried many amendments over the years, but horse manure is like a miracle. When I built my beds this spring a friend brought me two trailer loads from his stables. Just one season has passed and I cannot believe it's the same soil. There are virtually no clods left, just beautiful dark loamy soil. And it was dreadfully wet when I dug it!

I had the same space problems. I ended up putting my fruit crops (except strawberries) on the other side of the house. Not "traditional", but it works just fine.

Donna's summary of a potager garden is great. A potager is primarily an edible garden, with flowers mixed in for beneficial/companion effect, or to attract pollinators, to provide cut flowers, or simply for the aesthetic appeal. Think of a potager like a fine meal at a French restaurant - plenty of beautiful fresh veggies, savory herbs, a little fruit for dessert, a dash of color on your plate, and a flower in a vase on the table. Of course it's more than an analogy... if that's how you plant, that's how you'll eat.

One recommendation though... you might want to think a little more about fencing. I believe enclosure is very important to good garden design, especially in the potager style. Doesn't have to be a white picket fence. Could be as simple as woven branches or even rope strung between poles, or it could be as fancy as wrought-iron or masonry, but some type of enclosure or fencing will magically turn your garden from a hole excised from the lawn into a functional outdoor room - a place where you'll WANT to spend time. Because you'll want to spend time there, you'll be there to do what's necessary to maintain it, virtually ensuring success. Naturally, fencing also helps prevent intrusion by dogs, bunnies, etc, but I think it's important not to overlook the functional/aesthetic component of containment.

Personal plug: I've written quite a bit about this topic in my new book Garden Imperative. Link below.

-Diggity

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Imperative