A Feast for All the Senses: An American Potager Vegetable Garden
About 15 years ago Andy and I set to the task of building a potager-style vegetable garden. All in all, it has been a success, with a few minor bumps along the way. So, with a few months of winter’s rest behind us we are ready to start planning a recovery of sorts. Last summer’s rains turned our beautiful potager garden into a weed farm. Optimism runs high this time of the year, so the plan is to actively move tarps about to smother any emerging weed seedlings and to have plenty of wood chips on hand this spring to spread in the paths between our planting beds.
I like growing lots of vegetables but I also like things to look pretty so this is where a potager-style garden serves both ends. Jennifer Bartley writes in her book Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An American Potager Handbook.
What is a Potager? Translated literally from French, potage means a soup of broth and vegetables. For Europeans, le potager has come to mean simply a vegetable garden. But the term potager carries with it a much deeper historical tradition. This meaning stretches back to the Middle Ages when all of Western civilization—literature, history, and science—was hanging by a slender thread, hidden behind the high stone walls of medieval monasteries. These cultural outposts were small, isolated and largely self-sufficient. For the most part, the monks and nuns grew their own food, herbs, and medicines. Within small geometric plots, useful herbs, vegetables, and perhaps some flowers for the chapel altar were grown year-round for daily use. Monastery gardens were more than vegetable gardens, however; they were also used as sites for meditation and prayer.
Having a fruitful place for meditation sounds really appealing and that is precisely what a potager can help you achieve. Instead of stressing about getting the garden planted in spring, weeded all summer and cleaned up in the fall, you can approach each task on a scale that allows you to enjoy working in the garden. The potager garden can be dealt with piece by piece.
In the spring, for example, I will choose a series of small rectangular beds for my potatoes. I will use a broad fork to turn the soil (that had compost piled on the previous winter); plant the potatoes, mulch and it is done. When the onion sets arrive, I will choose a few more beds and do the same. When the heat arrives and it is time to plant summer crops, the same thing.
Each bed is dealt with on its own, unlike conventional row gardens that require a pass with a roto-tiller. I find, too, that there is a psychological advantage to having a series of smaller beds instead of one big garden. I can focus on one bed at a time and not get overwhelmed by an entire garden of weeds when it is time for summer cultivation.
If you are new to this, the first thing to do is to get the design down on paper, no fancy sketching needed. I put this into practice every year, actually, so I can keep track of what was planted where and I can rotate crops accordingly. Using interesting shapes in your design and shunning traditional straight rows is fun and it makes your vegetable garden, no matter how big or small, as welcoming as the rest of your landscape.
After the overall shape of the gardening space is determined then you can section out the parts within. Determine the main pathways and situate your largest planting areas off these; you can add smaller beds and footpaths once the anchor beds are established. If you have a square plot it could consist of four circle beds in the corners and four triangular beds, with points meeting in the center. Or a long rectangular plot could be laid out like a grid, for an easier approach. I say be as creative as you can handle, fitting together the pieces of the plot.
Framing the space is important, too, and has several functions. The practical side of framing the garden with a hedge or fence is that it can help keep out certain animal pests. However, if an animal is hungry enough, they will find a way in; if they are not, then maybe they’ll move on to the neighbor’s garden. Your frame can be a fence; but it can also be a hedge of boxwood (a long-used deer deterrent) or any other combination of plants. Arborvitae in a row on the west side, boxwood or dwarf fruit trees for an espaliered living fence, even chain link can be covered with the bounty of a summer vegetable. If you have something you want to cover choose climbing crops like pole beans and certain types of peas and cucumbers, for example.
“Growing up” can mean many things but in this case think “up” with edible and ornament plants that can cover fences, trellises, pergolas, bamboo tepees or any other structure in the garden. The frame around and the features within the garden create perspective in the space and it is this perspective that gives the plot a more designed feel.
And what good garden design doesn’t have something interesting going on year-round? The vegetable garden is usually ignored in the winter but not so with the fancy potager garden. Instead, the potager is filled with a diverse variety of plant material: some edible, some not; some annual, some perennial. There is hardscaping involved, too; some garden art, willow furniture or a brightly colored bench might welcome you in. This is perhaps the key, above all else: Mix your plants and make it an inviting space to work in, harvest from, or maybe even host a brunch with friends.
The best potager gardens include woody shrubs and small trees, vegetables, annuals, herbs and perennials. Everything can have a function: The dwarf espaliered apple trees are an edible backdrop that will nourish you while you work; the boxwood hedge will deter deer; figs, blueberries, tomatoes and cucumbers come to the table fresh; the peonies and zinnias will fill a vase; the basil will become pesto; the rosemary can be dried and used with lamb; and the salvia will attract the hummingbirds, who will then eat the mosquitoes before they bite me on summer evenings in my garden.
