This tiny, unassuming vegetable garden caught my eye recently on a garden tour. It was tucked away in the side yard of a rather large, elaborate estate garden, in a sunny spot near the kitchen door. And it reminded me that growing vegetables doesn’t have to be done on a large scale — after all, not everyone wants to put up jars of stewed tomatoes or fill the freezer with bags of pole beans.
Wouldn’t be nice to have just enough produce and fresh herbs to use for summertime meals, without having to deal with a surplus, or constant garden chores? For this kind of small scale gardening, these tiny raised beds seem perfect, eliminating the need for tilling, digging, and amending poor soil. Even though this kitchen garden is very utilitarian, I still found it charming.
Raised beds seem to be a trend right now. I recently saw another very functional raised bed garden on the food blog Hungry Memphis. And the L.A. Times home & garden blog featured a gardener who is using raised beds to grow vegetables in her tiny front yard.
However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kitchen garden more beautiful and well planned than Brooke Giannetti’s, below. Brooke blogs about interior design over at Velvet & Linen, where you can enjoy a photo tour of her gorgeous potager. I love the way she’s planted low growing herbs like lemon thyme outside the raised beds to soften the edges a bit!
What a fabulous idea! Just enough. Hmmm… will have to speak to the veg. gardener at my address whose motto seems to be ‘Only too much is enough!’