The Kitchen Garden

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The Kitchen Garden

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Edgings

Edgings of marigolds are part and parcel of my vegetable plantings every year. They ward off destructive insects, especially nematodes if you use the Mexican marigold, tagetes minuta. One of the beauties of the kitchen garden is its sense of neatness and order with raised beds and pretty edgings such as the marigolds. Teucrium or herbs such as lemon thyme could be used, English kitchen gardens in grand form used boxwood to surround block plantings.

Lettuces can be used as edgings, as well as annual herbs such as basil, which has a pretty appearance and comes in various leaf colorations.
Hardscape edgings include bricks, brick pathways, and wood frames for raised beds, something easy to manage and weed.
Landscape edgers come in many styles, textures and colors and could be used to build up some very attractive beds.

Trellises

The trellis seems to be an integral part of the kitchen garden. Serving to hold precious fruits off the ground, save garden space, and give a vertical focus to the eye, these prove both utilitarian and decorative. Simple central tripods or trelliswork along a wall, these supports are easy to make and also available in almost any garden center both in wood and ornamental metalwork.

On the grand scale they provide shady arbors, and even pergolas dripping with grapes, on the smaller scale they are the support for runner beans, peas, or a single tomato plant. They can be plain or brightly painted, even placed against a wall in such a way as to trompe -l’œil
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Pathways

Paths in this type of garden are straightforward and geometrically ordered. that simplifies the maintenance and underlines the fact that this is a working garden after all, no meandering down the path when supper awaits. They are for walking on and keeping up with the weeding, but that doesn’t mean the straight lines and geometric patterns are not pleasing. They can echo trellis work or simply divide the beds into the old quarter system; there is something settled and right about such a design and it is thankfully simpler to maintain in good order. Brick is a beautiful material to use for this, but hard beaten dirt paths can be almost as good…as long as there isn’t too much rain and muddy conditions. I personally don’t like materials such as mulch or straw in these areas… the mulch is messy and the straw seems to beget weeds. Rosemary Verey had an endearing such garden constructed with brick paths.