CREATING A POTAGER GARDEN

Creating vegetable beds in patterns with dividing pathways can be an attractive and practical way to grow. Emma Rawlings offers some tips on making a potager

- Emma Rawlings

The potager garden is traditionally a vegetable plot divided up into beds, often edged with plants like box hedging, with the spaces in between sown and planted with vegetables and/or flowers and herbs. It can make a very stylish looking kitchen garden that is attractive all year round.

PLAN FOR PERFECTION

If you have an area of ground you want to convert into a potager then measure it out and using a bit of paper play around with the measurements and ideas for design.

The simplest design would be to create four beds divided by pathways. In the central area where the paths divide you could maybe place a pot with a specimen tree. The beds could be edged with low hedging. This is a very basic potager design and can be created in quite small area but if you have a lot of space you could be much more elaborate. When designing the potager you need to make sure the paths are wide enough and there is room for the low hedging to grow and expand because even dwarf hedging plants put on a certain girth after time. You also need to consider the size of the beds for growing.