A Neat And Tidy Vegetable Garden

A well-designed vegetable garden (Click here for vegetable gardening in detail) can be both beautiful and an important part of your landscape, if it’s situated in a prominent area. And, by making maximum use of your space, it’s also much more productive. The image below shows a tightly organized plan for a vegetable garden that is handsome in its orderliness and highly efficient in its use of space.

Keep the following in mind when designing your vegetable garden:

• Divide the garden. Dividing the area into square or rectangular beds allows for easy access to each planting section and makes the garden both ornamental and functional.
• Build in walkways. Pathways between the beds allow you to get around without muddying your feet. Surface paths with mulch, pea gravel, brick, stepping stones, or sawdust.
• Interplant. Interplanting (planting one kind of plant between another) is key for space efficiency. For example, you can interplant radishes with peppers. By the time the peppers have spread out, the fast-growing radishes have finished their season and are out of the way.
• Go organic. Interplant pungent plants, such as garlic, basil, and marigolds, with tomatoes to naturally ward off insects. Even if they didn’t help with your pest control, they’d still be a nice addition to any vegetable garden. (Click here for more on organic pest control)
• Create shade. Corn is a tall crop that’s used to shade the ground for cool-season crops like lettuce.
• Grow up. By using teepees, trellises, and fences you can train vining crops (such as peas, beans, and cucumbers) up the structures to save ground space and make picking easier. Vertical structures also add visual interest to a vegetable garden. Tomato cages are another good way to introduce verticality into a vegetable garden. Near the base of vine teepees, underground crops like potatoes and onions work well because they take so little space.

A Pretty, Formal Herb Garden

Herbs fit somewhere in every garden. Many herbs and perennial flowers thrive under similar conditions. Some basic landscape plants, such as rosemary and lavender, are also herbs. You can grow them in containers and snip parsley right out your back door (click here for more on container gardening), or you can grow a traditional formal herb garden. The image below shows a formal herb garden in the traditional circular plan. This garden takes careful planning and installation, as well as a good deal of maintenance, but it could easily be the high point of your garden.

Use the following tips when creating your own herb garden:

• Establish a focal point.  ....read more