witzend, I love that description about how the worms came in, it is very heartening. Last house my farmer neighbour used to grow the same winter wheat year after year and he said that the agronomist told him that his soil was barren, so he put nasty bulk fertilisers on it and he sprayed against insects with a big machine and the land remained barren and people locally developed some nasty illnesses, all in the same valley, near those fields
I did what I could on my allotment, discovered bocking 14 comfrey and never looked back, bees loved it and I always left some flowers for them. Our allotments, like oases in a desert of surrounding farmland, much now owned by men in suits. When I came here, I made sure to bring some bits of comfrey and they took hold and the bumble bees came and have stayed
Gransnet forums
Gardening
MawtheMerrier
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!
Ours is strictly divided into flowers, fruit and veg.
I think DH would look bemused if I suggested a potager garden (he's a bit old-fashioned 
)
However, we do have flowers amongst the veg but they're known as weeds by other people.
I noticed that forget-me-nots have taken over my strawberry patch so I must heave them out, they are thugs.
That sounds lovely, M0nica.
My new home has a gravel garden which, I have discovered from the neighbours, was professionally designed for the previous owner as she was gradually losing her sight and needed something very low maintenance. It was the garden that sold the property to me and I was lucky to get it.
I'm not a low maintenance gardener though so I'm raking off some areas of gravel and removing sections of landscape fabric so I can deepen the very narrow borders. I'm delighted that the compacted clay soil underneath crumbles easily when worked and there are lots of worms!!
It's not a large garden but there is room between the shed and a hedge to develop a small vegetable patch with raised beds. The gravel paths are already there. Bonus!
I had to leave a lot of stone pots, sculptures and pieces of agricultural equipment behind when I moved 
but I will have fun trying to source new 'treasures'
Never let authenticity get in the way of a good design concept.
Prairie gardening, wildflower meadows, etc., etc.,
Garden Centres rub their hands in glee!
I didn't say there was anything wrong with wild flower meadows. 
but try fitting 6.5 acres into a Chelsea show garden.
Gardeners are inspired by these designs, hence my comment about Garden Centres rubbing their hands in glee.
What a fantastic thread karmalady. Thank you for starting it and I'll be back quite often to see how you are doing.
Seven years ago, I moved to be with my new partner, now husband. I inherited what you see in the first photo.?
I grew up in Derbyshire and my father was a keen gardener. We had very little money and my father made good use of his council house garden. Looking back, it would have been described as a potager garden and I loved helping him with it.
50 years later, after a couple of years hard grafting, I now have one of my own and the time to tend it. I uncovered the low raised beds and put a new skin on the polytunnel (photo). It went through a major change two years ago when I was 70. In the last photo, it shows the raised beds becoming even more raised with wide paving around them for the barrow !
I have also planted fruit trees away from the beds. This year I am trying to grow squash. ??
I had never come across the word potager until last year when looking for somewhere to take my visiting daughter for lunch. She is a pescatarian and loves her veggies. I discovered Potager Garden just 45 mins drive from me. After an amazing lunch prepared from what is grown there, we had a wander around the whole of the huge garden that had been slowly rescued from a mass of brambles 20 years ago.
It's been interesting to read that potager gardens in France date back to the Middle Ages when people were given two plots - one for a building and the other to grow vegetables and fruit. They did grow flowers too: Marigolds keep aphids at bay, while roses and nasturtiums attract them and so were – and still are – “sacrificial plants” to draw the little critters away from the vegetables. I've tried marigolds before not so sure about sacrificing a rose though !
Like many of our English words, potager has been introduced from outside the UK. Apparently though it has/had another spelling: Middle English word pottage, circa 1175–1225
Lots of luck and enjoyment with your's Karmalady. Watch your back!
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