I know, it looks like a regular garden. But a potager isn’t just any garden. It contains not only vegetables, but also flowers, herbs and fruit. And, it’s my happy place.
Often, when arriving home from work or errands in the summer months, I would walk through this gate and tour the garden even before walking into the house. The dogs would often follow me in, munching on kale, which grew with abandon, as I let volunteers sprout and grow where they liked. The dogs also love fresh green beans and would pull them right off the plant. I was ok with them eating the green beans; they don’t grow from volunteers, but only two out of five of us in our household like them, and I grow a number of plants for symmetry, which we’ll get to in a later post. They also stole tomatoes right off the vine any chance they got. As tomatoes are my prize vegetable crop, this offense resulted in immediate ejection from the garden. The remainder of my garden tour proceeded with three sets of eyes peering forlornly at me from the other side of the fence. At this point, you may think with is all very well and good, but, what is a potager, you ask. Let’s dig into that.
Upon close inspection of the opening photograph, you can see this garden has brick pathways, garden beds and flowers. Not as discernable, are espaliered apple trees, herbs, and vegetables. The garden also sits close to the house. By definition, this is a potager. You may still be asking, ok, but, exactly what is a potager? Technically, it is a French term, translated as “kitchen garden”. And to be considered a potager, a garden must have pathways, garden beds, vegetables, herbs, fruit and flowers. And, for me, “potager” sounds much more intriguing and romantic than “garden”.
I enjoy fine English garden magazines and videos, and following gardeners on social media as they share what’s growing that day in their allotments. When the frost line in my USDA zone 5a garden is a good two feet down, English gardeners are harvesting tulips and narcissi and planting out the first cold tolerant seedlings that they started in their greenhouses and polytunnels. On a cold midwestern winter afternoon I adore sitting in front of our crackling fireplace, poring over my small collection of coffee table books on French kitchen gardens. What could be more glorious to a gardener than a summer’s afternoon in a kitchen garden in Provence? The chances of my family moving to Provence are smaller than winning the lottery, so, the only option to realize such a dream was to bring the kitchen garden to my own yard.
My greatest inspiration in designing my potager is my well worn copy of Louisa Jones’ “The Art of French Vegetable Gardening”. There are post it notes sticking up among the pages at the top of the book, where I have marked ideas for plant combinations, and the spine is loose when opening. I adore this book, and many a bleak Michigan winter day has been spent within these pages. (As of this writing, there are 32 used copies for sale on Amazon.) Ms. Jones chronicles the history of French gardening style, and includes beautiful photographs of flourishing potagers; from historical formal château gardens and potagers to small home potagers. The latter gardeners are the ones I study the most. Like me, they seek to combine the practicality of vegetables with the beauty and color of flowers.
The photograph directly above shows my first potager. Our three kids were young; it was so much easier to garden at the house and let them play in the yard than to schlep everyone up to the regular garden at the family farm. To create this garden, I drew the plan to scale on graph paper using ideas I had gleaned from Ms. Jones’ books. I removed the sod on the northern side of our yard by hand, brought boards home from the hardware store, and cut them with a handsaw. I nailed the boards together to create the garden beds. I was a lot younger then. After a year or two I had someone deliver and shovel in pea gravel into the pathways. I loved it!
In 2016, we were able to expand our property, so a new potager was built, this time by professionals. I gave the landscaper my graph paper drawing, and she made changes, and her husband constructed this dreamscape. I got right to work. I have been starting my own tomato seeds for over twenty years, and I have always surrounded my tomato plants in the potager with dwarf marigolds. Of course, yes, specifically dwarf French marigolds. The marigolds are said to keep worms in the soil away from the tomato plants. I can not tell you if this is true or not, but what I can tell you, is that blooming flowers in the garden bring the pollinators in early. When the tomato plants and other vegetables finally bloom, the garden is already buzzing with pollinators, ready to go! And I absolutely love the rows of bright orange tucked under the tomato plants.
The garden in the opening photograph and the three directly above, was my previous potager. We sold that house, built a new one, and, this summer, a new potager. 2024 will be the first summer planting in the new garden. I hope you follow along as I chronicle seed starting, how I plan my garden beds, and what will be growing in the potager this year. I’d love to hear from you! Comment below and join me here and on Instagram and Pinterest. And, you may want to read along to the next post; “Dreams Do Come True!”, where I share my biggest gardening dream come true; a glasshouse!
