New potager garden is complete. Has anyone else got a potager?

By potager do you mean kitchen garden ?
Veggies instead of flowers?
As a child it was the vegetable garden or even the humble cabbage patch!

It has been tremendously hard work but also very satisfying while keeping me strong with all the heavy lifting. My best tool was a gorilla pry bar and my kneeler was in use all the time. Every plant, apart from ground cover and some perennials, was given a deep cleaned hole, size depending on final plant size eg the trees had holes that were deeper than my arms could reach when I was flat on the ground. All the plants were given a good rich feeding base. I never saw even one worm when I started

I wanted height and fruit and trees, bearing in mind my garden is small. I chose appropriate rootstocks for my apple trees. 2019 I put the 4 cornerstone apples in, including a crabapple which will be taller but is in a good place, neighbours will see it but it will never overhang their gardens. That year I planted 3 standard gooseberries, ie elevated on a stem which I carefully supported

Love to see pictures of your new garden

A potager isn’t just a vegetable garden Mawthemerrier, it’s a mixture of vegetables and flowers, designed like a tapestry to look good all year as well as being functional. A traditional British kitchen/vegetable garden wasn’t like that, it was rows of vegetables, more like an allotment style.
I grow my vegetables in patches mixed in with the flowers karmalady, but not set out as a potager, because it’s not flat, one side is a fairly steep bank. Good luck with it, it’s harder to achieve than it looks.

Then I put roses in, lots of them and all david austin, I called all this planting `moving in costs`. Later 2 sheerwater rowan trees, one each side of the crabapple and have pruned these 3 trees to form a shady canopy over a small low green seat that I placed there

I changed my username from when I started btw

A bit of trial and error later, I decided to go for value for space and now have 3 octaganol beds of asparagus, a water feature, three various sizes of hand made iron obelisks (expensive) each with a climbing rose. 3 blackcurrants, ben sarek which can be grown close together. Feature grasses, echinaceas, hellebores, helianthemums and have just started various sedums for ground cover.

I have a patch of comfrey bocking 14 which is not fertile, it is the bedrock of my compost, can be cut three times a year and I also have 3 small hotbins, which churn out black gold, even from chopped rose prunings. I grew lots of veg on that plot last year and my tomatoes were divine

My soil is traversed by many rubber stepping stones, which will be hidden by soil cover one day. I did put lots of lavender in last year but have taken them out as I want minimal work and don`t want plants that get woody and need close pruning every year

Up the side I have 4 1 x 1m raised beds, rotations and again value -for -space veggies ie ones that I really want like purple sprouting, shallots etc. There is also a small side space up there, for rhubarb. I have made a few changes for this year, for ease, taking into account my age and being on my own eg tall beans will become dwarf beans and I will be limiting the number of veggie plants that I grow

I have a very big patio but obviously another post for that, vegtrugs and various containers including many self-watering troughs. Two large, tall, attractive water butts take care of watering requirements with my blueberries having priority, 6 of these in pots gave me 12kg of pesticide-free berries, used much freezer space, I added 3 more bluecrop last year as I eat these every day through the year. Probably my most valuable crop

So now I am just about at the enjoyment stage when my garden pretty well looks after itself and yes I now have zillions of healthy worms and my potager has become a pottering and productive garden, rather than up to my armpits in heavy work, every dry day

It has taken me from may 2019 to november 2021

yes casdon, spot on, a tapestry is a wonderful description. The garden makes my heart sing like a colorful interesting tapestry

It sounds wonderful karmalady, any pictures? The word is used more in France Maw originating as a kitchen garden to make potage, a thick soup.
I don’t have the room here unfortunately karma I did build a kitchen garden in France for friends.

I always think it's such a compliment when the worms come. You know you're doing the right thing by the soil when they move in. I'd love to see photos too please.

I would also like to see photos

Potager style gardens became trendy in the nineties. Sometimes just a section rather than the whole garden. Chelsea garden designers went to town on them!

The main problem was that once you started harvesting the produce the whole tapestry effect was completely ruined and they dropped out of favour.

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Jaxjacky

It sounds wonderful karmalady, any pictures? The word is used more in France Maw originating as a kitchen garden to make potage, a thick soup.
I don’t have the room here unfortunately karma I did build a kitchen garden in France for friends.

I did know that thank you Jaxjacky even without recourse to Collins, those years studying for my MA in French and German did not go to waste.

When the DGCs outgrew the large sandpit DH had built for them in our garden I decided to turn it into a trendy potager.

The tricky bit is getting everything to perfection at the same time. Even one slug damaged lettuce can ruin the effect.

After I’d taken photos for my design portfolio I then gave away most of it as we couldn’t stagger harvesting and bolting lettuce is not a good look. ?

I went right off Lollo Rosso although I did manage to freeze the dwarf beans and ruby chard.

I expect self sufficiency will continue as the top trend in veg gardening this year. Alan Titchmarshe’s program on Growing Your Own last night was inspiring.

A deleted post on a gardening thread???

What have I missed?

That sounds a very expensive garden - can we all come round for tea to enjoy it with you??

I have a small town garden (new build house) but we do what we can with it- still seems to cost a lot at the garden centre though and the small amount of landscaping we had done.

A potager sounds wonderful - so glad it has turned out well for you.
We are having a long hard think about what to do with our new garden and a potager is high on my list of good ideas, but other things to do first!
Growing veg is something I have done since I was very small and always enjoyed. I remember Brighton Council (1970's) used beetroot in their display flower beds for the foliage colours too!

Mine does not come to fruition at the same time and I don`t bother with lettuces or veg like radishes on the soil, the snails would have a heyday. I chose roses because they are so easy to care for, can be easily be moved and flower for most of the year and the grasses are statuesque for a long time, not all are large plants yet as I did much dividing. My best surprise veg from the soil were my tomatoes last year, water must have been more consistent and no blossom end rot

I have been growing my own veg for a very long time and gave up my allotment when I moved, hence the potager, best of both worlds

I chose sheerwater rowans because of the bird friendly berries, bird attraction and autumn colour, its maximum width will be 4m. They will eventually between 8 and 12 m tall and will never been a nuisance to a neighbour because of its upright habit and their careful positioning

My blueberries are just starting to bud and my kilmarnock willow in a pot has produced catkins, which have now changed to yellow pollen producers, I have seen two bees and a bumble bee, it is early days for them, nice to have some food for them

We don’t do potager, as such, but two of our raised beds always have sweet peas growing along one side, calendula on the other edges and somehow self sown Cosmos do like the middle.

bigbertha, yes of course it was expensive. David austin roses are expensive, obelisks are expensive, so are trees and plants but it is part of my home, my moving in costs. I didn`t have any landscaping done, it was all by my own hand, including digging out the 8 inches needed for base for the extra 16 sq m of patio. I had to use a crowbar for that. It saved a lot of money and enabled the builder to get on with work I could not do

j52 yes raised beds are so good for all sorts of reasons. I am in process of filling two large planters on legs, they have clear domed tops that I can clip on. Cheapest for me is to 3/4 fill with cardboard and partly composted material from the top of my hotbins. I have finished one and it just took one emptied growbag to fill it, normally it would be 3 bags. It will sink a bit.

Also many plants can be divided in year two, obviously not the single stemmed trees, the fruiting shrubs and roses but it keeps costs down by dividing eg I bought 12 patio strawberries 2 years ago and now have over 70, they are so pretty, I like them better than other patio flowers and so productive, big sweet berries until autumn. Now I am waiting for my sedums to grow as I want many more and I may divide helianthemums later this year. Also tiny plug plants are very cheap but need tlc

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It sounds delightful Karmalady - I’d love to see some photos!

Coastpath, I do echo that about worms!
When newly married and living in a small new prefab in what was a stony sort of Middle Eastern desert, I did my best to make a little garden in front. A load of what they called ‘sweet soil’ was delivered - it was basically just non-salty sand (we were near the coast) - no organic content at all, or at least not that you could see.

All I could plant at first was a very hardy flowering creeper that grew on the beaches anyway, but I was amazed to find that in a relatively short time, presumably just by the addition of water and the action of roots growing in it, the ‘sand’ turned into something much more resembling what we call soil.

And a bit later, earthworms! Where they came from in that arid and stony desert area I have no idea.
I later grew all sorts - which were once devoured in just a few hours by a plague of locusts - but I just had to suck that up. The locals liked eating them! One man’s meat, etc….

PS, apologies for the lengthy digression!