[Swing Swang]

Just a thought,

Has anyone seen a 'naturalistic' potager. I'm thinking, say, of great curving drifts of quinoa, all red and yellow in the summer sun interspersed with clumps of really tall varieties of corn, possibly climbing beans as a backdrop. A variety of intermediate mid-height plantings (say purple sprouts and beautifully flowered peas) would add further interest, and a plethora of mixed veg in the foreground interspersed with trailing squash etc.

Probably not that different to an allotment, only planned.

I think that such an informal planting would look great, but take a lot of work, and in any case I don't have the space.

Be nice to know if any public gardens have run with this idea and if I could plan to visit them next year.


Regards,

SS

[Goosegirl]

Sometimes in this life us gardeners have to forgo all the rules of, say, crop rotation, right plant, right place etc 'cos they don't have the means; and it don't always work out as you can do all the right things then someone else comes along and doesn't and gets better results - grrrrr! Take my hero Geoff Hamilton's look on life and look to your soil first, then just go for it as anything is possible and the main thing is to enjoy what you're doing as long as you get some crops and learn from it. It sounds lovely. Go to Barnsdale Gardens or read his books on Cottage and Paradise Gardens as he seemed to cram veg in all sorts of small places with great enthusiasm so it must have worked for him or he wouldn't have done it. Best of luck!!

[zazen999]

Mine's a bit like that.......although I am still making the sides of alot of the beds up but it's work in progress rather than 'job done'...organised chaos 

[tam]

I have a squash going up across a trellis at the back of a flower border. It was mixed in with mange toutes but those are pretty much finished now. There is an aubergine, sweet pepper and tom mixed in with the flowers in front. Then in another I have a backdrop of runner beans and sunflowers with sweetcorn and shrubs in front. Does that count? Both borders are new so the veg is a good infill for the spaces where shrubs etc. are still small.

They are all quite decorative, the runners are mixed red/white/pink flowers, the aubs have great leaves an pretty purple flowers and the squash big leaves and bright flowers.