Grow what you love in a kitchen garden and enjoy the freshest tastes in a most rewarding way

Grow what you love to eat in a kitchen garden, and enjoy seasonal produce with the freshest taste, in the most rewarding way

There is something infinitely satisfying about providing some of your own, homegrown vegetables, fruit and herbs for the kitchen table. Whether grown in containers, raised beds, or a fully functioning decorative potager, a kitchen garden can supply all those special plants you love to use, may be difficult to buy, or are expensive in the shops, and they will be fresher and tastier straight from the ground.

Growing fruit and vegetables does require a level of dedication, but is immensely gratifying. Many crops are also quite beautiful to look at, so can be a decorative addition to your planting – such as the vibrant stems of chard against the deep green crinkle of the leaves; bright, shiny jewels of red currants glistening with raindrops; the purple sketched veins on cabbages, or the architectural heads of artichokes silhouetted against the sky.

Planning for production

If this is your first time growing edibles, it is best to start small and with the easiest crops. Take some time to consider what would suit your needs and where you may have space for beds or containers in your garden. Draw up a plan of the beds needed to accommodate what you’d like to grow. Symmetry and balance are key elements for a formal layout, but they also work to add drama and focus to an informal look. For the highest yield, though, stagger the plants in triangles.

Raised beds are an easy way to manage a productive garden, and can be filled with organically rich, deep soil ready to use. Four beds would work well with crop rotation.

Pick your spot

The ideal location for a kitchen garden is a convenient, protected spot enjoying around six hours of sun a day, as most of your crops will be quick-growing annuals.

Positioning close to the kitchen allows you to pop out quickly and grab a handful of herbs or a larger harvest as needed. Hedging, fencing or

hurdles can be used to shelter plants from the wind, especially on the west side, but also maximise every space by making good use of the vertical surfaces for growing – from walls and lattices, to pergolas and arbours. Options include living edible walls with pocket systems or pots; climbing and espaliered vegetables and fruit; or containers on low brick walls could be both decorative and practical for choices such as salad leaves, herbs and strawberries.

If you don’t have the room or time for a separate area you can integrate a small selection of edibles among herbs and flowers, moving crops and flowers in rotation. A wigwam of beans in a container or rising out of a garden bed takes up little room and looks pretty in flower, and a wide variety of herbs, such as rosemary, chives and sage, are an attractive addition in any garden.

Taste selection

Aim for a mix of crops you love to eat, herbs you use regularly and fruit you enjoy, adding in perennial flowering plants, annuals and some shrubs for year-round structure.

Sow successionally in the growing season, interplant compatible edibles, and rotate crops to avoid disease building up in the soil. Pop in some bulbs, such as tulips and alliums, for spring colour during the ‘hungry gap’.

Starting in summer with your kitchen garden gives you a varied smörgåsbord to sow for harvesting through the autumn and winter, including beans, beetroot, spring cabbage, sprouting broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, chard, cut-and-come-again leafy salads, peas, pumpkin and pak choi. There are many crops that can be sown directly into the warm soil. You can also buy small vegetable plants from nurseries to add directly into beds or containers.

Organic principles

The ideal soil is rich in nutrients, has an open texture to allow water and roots to penetrate, while holding moisture well. The less you do to the soil the better; single digging is sufficient and many gardeners advocate a no-dig method.

Aim to be as organic as possible for the most nutritious produce, so be prepared to tackle pests with physical defences and use companion planting – such as edging with chives or marigolds – to attract beneficial insects and deter pests.

Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy established The Land Gardeners to research plant and soil health, and encourage biodiversity (thelandgardeners.com). They advise to:

● Use a lot of green manures, such as phacelia, buckwheat or mustard, which look beautiful.

● Attract beneficial insects by growing plenty of herbs and annuals alongside your crops, such as nasturtium and calendula.

● Rotate crops; brassicas follow the legumes.

● Move the flowers around the beds each year, looking for beautiful combinations and always experimenting with new companions.

● Plant your perennial vegetables and fruit together, such as horseradish, rhubarb, asparagus and blackcurrants.

● Plant mixed native hedging, such as hawthorn intermingling with dog roses, around the plot if needing shelter and protection.

Laws of attraction

Having produce interwoven with companion plants and cut flowers can create an attractive feature that is too lovely to have languishing at the bottom of the garden. Decorative patterns, gravel or stone paths, espaliered structures, and a focal point of a water feature can create the scene more of a potager, than a utilitarian vegetable plot.

At RHS Rosemoor, ornamentals and edibles blend in an effervescent profusion in the potager. ‘One of my favourite combinations from last year’s potager display happened slightly by accident,’ explains Peter Adams, the Edibles Team Leader. ‘We always grow kale ‘Black Magic’ and kale ‘Redbor’ next to each other as the dark green and red foliage of the two varieties contrast so well with one another, but the potager beds are also full of seeds from things from previous years that have set seed. Dill grew up naturally between the kales and their delicate yellow flowers contrasted even better among the already dazzling display of kale leaves.’

Another attractive combination used at Rosemoor is the bold colours of Swiss chard varieties including ‘Fantasy’, ‘Bright Yellow’ and ‘White Silver’, with surrounding plantings of borage, Californian poppies, and the delicate flowers of coriander ‘Confetti’, helping to set the chard off.

Peter offers the following advice for creating a decorative potager:

● When choosing varieties of vegetables or fruit to grow, look for ones with particularly attractive features, such as colourful leaves and stems, like beetroot ‘Bull’s Blood’, or unusual leaves like curly kales that come in a fantastic array of colours, such as kale ‘Candy Floss’.

● Make use of vegetables with unusual flower colours, such as broad bean ‘Crimson Flowered’ and runner bean ‘Celebration’ or ‘Painted Lady’

● Build layers up in your potager to add depth, and height is important, too.

● Don’t always grow lots of one thing: dotting the odd unusual vegetable or fruit among the mix helps to capture the eye.

● Let plants such as dill and poppies go to seed - their seed heads are beautiful and as they self seed it will help to naturalise your potager in years to come, as they germinate and fill gaps naturally.

Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy are known for their pretty planting combinations, such as cosmos or nasturtiums with the glaucous grey of cavolo nero, or dahlias with leeks going to seed.

‘Try fennel with parsnips, and pick the umbellifer heads of both for the vase – parsnip is so beautiful when it goes to seed. Big pot of tulips look lovely planted with mint, and we also incorporate peonies in a kitchen garden and

interplant with Verbena bonariensis and cosmos for when the peonies die back,’ they advise.

Even in a small space you can adapt this ornamental concept, possibly with characterful containers or one large trough planted with some favourite edibles, mingling happily with a selection of flowers.

A raised bed formal potager at garden designer Adam Vetere’s home, features an abundance of produce focusing on his passion for Mediterranean cooking, including a range of onions, leeks, herbs, courgettes, tomatoes and espaliered fruit, as well as aubergines and peppers in the glasshouse

Above: Set near the kitchen for ease of harvesting, complete with a pretty seat to rest and survey the growing crops, this is a lovely plot to emulate with its neatly planted rows interwoven with calendula flowers Right: Adding tulip bulbs is a decorative touch during the ‘hungry gap’ in spring while waiting for vegetable plants to grow, as here, where they add a welcome splash of colour against the rhubarb and chard plants

Right: A kitchen garden can be both decorative and productive, mixing architectural crops with bright blooms. Nasturtiums add a bright pop of colour beside neat rows of compact and tightly packed forms of spring cabbage

Below, left to right: Easy to grow, ornamental, and tasty raw or cooked, especially when harvested young, ruby, white or rainbow chard also offers you a long season, so is well worth growing; cook up wonderful Italian recipes with more unusual varieties of homegrown tomatoes, aubergines and peppers than you can find in the shops, and don’t forget the herbs, such as purple and green basil; regularly harvesting courgettes several times a week from when they are about 10cm long keeps the plant producing for a long cropping period through to October; grow tomatoes outside in a full sun position, or in the greenhouse – the better flavour is incomparable to shop bought

Left: Space-saving and self-fertile, gooseberry bushes can be popped between rows of vegetables. They can be trained as standards, and then prune them annually to maintain their shape Below: Harvest your crops, such as ruby chard, as you need them. Although they keep in the fridge, they are best when picked fresh