Monday, August 29, 2011

The Lazy Gardener

I am a lazy gardener. And no, this is NOT a picture of my garden. This beautiful garden photo is courtesy of BHG.
This photo is an example of a french potager style garden . I LOVE potager gardens and I'll tell you why. For those of you not familiar with potagers , a potager by definition is garden that combines both edible and ornamental plants; a vegetable garden that is utilitarian in nature but designed with beauty in mind; much like an English kitchen garden, but often formal and symmetrically designed in the French fashion. That is why I LOVE potager style gardens. They include beauty and function.
Potagers are very similar in that respect to the English Cottage garden. They just tend to be a little more on the formal side.
Now don't get me wrong , I love having fresh vegetables right outside my door, but shouldn't"t it be an attractive vegetable garden?
My grandparents always planted a row of glads and zinnias in the front of their garden. Perfect for a vase on the kitchen table.
 My mother-in-law always planted marigold to keep pests away. Function and beauty.
I had my own version of a potager garden one year at the dairy farm and I LOVED it ! Unfortunately, I was the only one.
 I took 4 very large tractor tires and positioned them in a square, in the center of the square I placed a round decorative piece that was once part of a barn cupola , it was SO cool ! In each of them I planted vegetables surrounded by flowers. At the entrance I placed and arbor with two smaller tires on each side. In these I planted squash and gourds to climb the trellis. It didn't get weedy , I could mow the path in between the tires , it was BEAUTIFUL ! I would just sit in a chair and admire my handy work !
 Alas , one of the afore mentioned moves ( to town ) and my wonderful son ( he really is , but he has never really appreciated my garden skills) insisted we remove it ! No large tractor tires for him to mow around ...
Fast forward to present day.


 Again,  I am a lazy gardener. I start out in the spring designing an attractive garden , with flowers intermingled with my veggies. But it's Iowa , and it gets HOT and HUMID and I get REALLY lazy and by August , this is what MY garden looks like.I'm not the best photographer in the world, my flowers don't show in this picture. I do have cleome and cosmos planted around my tomatoes, cucumbers , peppers and eggplant.
It may not be the beautiful potager that I envisioned this spring but we have plenty of tomatoes and peppers for our omelet each morning and enough share with our friends. In the end , I guess that's what matters most.
Till next time...

1 comment:

  1. I love this post, Dawn. I'd love to get some ideas for how to grow food on my rooftop in pots. Hopefully next year I'll have the resources to get set up! I'll look at this again in April to get inspired. xo Heather

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