Nancy McNeish
Are you ready for Color! Texture! Drama! in the vegetable garden?
These and other possibilities await if you think outside the (veggie) box. Now is the time to plant all of those luscious warm season varieties you want to grow. Why not plan for a garden that is as gorgeous as it is delicious?
Once the soil is well prepared with Bumper Crop or G & B Garden Compost and fortified with E.B. Stone Organic Fertilizer, you are ready to plant your design.
Start with a focal point. It could be a large pot spilling over with strawberries, a fountain, a birdbath or even a small fruit tree. A place for your eye to rest in a sea of produce.
Plant lots of colors. Enjoy not only red tomatoes but yellow and purple ones as well. Delight in green peppers as they become red. Watch squashes and pumpkins coloring up to yellow and orange as the season progresses. And continue to harvest leaves of lettuces, kale, and swiss chard in shades of green, red, purple and blues.
Enjoy the variety of leaf textures. From soft, ferny asparagus and carrots to roughly toothed silvery artichokes, bold zucchini, and velvety eggplant. Add some spiky forms with scallions, chives, and lemongrass.
Add vertical elements, like a teepee or an overhead arbor for climbers such as cucumbers, beans, kiwis, and even melons to ramble up. Paint the structure in bright or earthy colors to complement your garden.
Provide a small sitting area in the garden, because gardens are for people. Furnish it with a bench or a table and chairs. Maybe even plant your veggies in sweeping curves around this spot, or in bold blocks of color.
Plant flowers, too, both because they bring joy, and because they bring the pollinators needed to make your garden produce. So many lovely choices: alyssum, ceanothus, coreopsis, gaillardia, lavender, marigolds, nepeta, salvia, yarrow, zinnias, and many more.
Rotate tomatoes and others into different areas – maybe right into your flower garden or mixed border. This simple step can help prevent disease problems and add unexpected delight elsewhere.
Finally, there comes a time of the year when the vegetable garden is not-so-lovely. A simple fix is to surround it with a low evergreen border, such as ‘Stokes Dwarf’ Yaupon Holly, and you have made it a front yard worthy design.
As for the Drama? That’s what happens as life unfolds in the garden, like a butterfly wing from a chrysalis.
We heartily recommend Rosalind Creasy’s book Edible Landscaping for more inspiration.
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