Fashionable Vegies

Create a Stylish, Fashionable and Decorative Vegetable Garden.

Through the centuries, vegetables, herbs and other edible plants have been grown in a range of decorative designs. These designs can be adapted to suit today’s gardening styles.

• Walled gardens – used since medieval times, walled gardens provide a private sanctuary from the outside world. The walls create a sheltered environment, ideal for growing plants that might not survive in more exposed conditions. The walls themselves are an attractive design feature: traditionally walls were built from local stone, but in today’s gardens they are usually constructed from rendered brick. The walls are ideal for growing espaliers.
• Knot gardens – originating in formal gardens in the Elizabethan era, knot or parterre gardens were arranged in geometric patterns (knots), designed to be viewed from an upper window. The borders of the knots were edged in low, clipped edges and filled with gravel or, less commonly, with massed herbs or flowering plants.
• Formal vegetable gardens – also called Potagers, the concept of growing vegetables and ornamentals in stylised, formal beds separated by paths originated in France. The beds are usually edged with a clipped low-growing hedge, and often feature standard plants (such as standard roses) or formal topiary plants in the centre of the garden or on the corners of the beds.  In some cases, religious symbols were incorporated into the design of such gardens.

Stylish Contemporary Vegetable Garden Design

You might like to include some of the following design ideas in your herb and vegetable garden:

• Grow a colourful vegetable garden – choose one or two main colours for contrast or harmony and plan for seasonal colour effects.  For example, plant parsley borders around coloured foliage vegetables such as kale or a coloured lettuce.
• Mix vegetables with other plants – in the flower garden, in rock gardens, amongst fruit trees.
• Grow espaliered fruit trees – espaliers are plants trained to grow flat along a wall. They look great, they save space, and the wall provides a warm, protected environment for growth and early fruit ripening. Most commonly espaliers are fruit trees, such as apples and pears, but climbers trained on wires attached to a wall are also popular.
• Use hedging – hedges can be informal or formal, but generally the best hedges for vegetable gardens are multi-functional: they shelter the growing beds, they provide a sense of year-round structure and permanence to the garden, they screen the garden from view, and they give flowers, fruits or nuts. Depending on the climate and garden style, lavender, rugosa roses, rosemary, hazelnuts, lilly pillies and citrus make useful and attractive hedges.
• Use attractive climbing frames and trellises – there are many different ready-made structures available for supporting climbing plants, or you can make your own. A bamboo or metal tripod is an attractive support peas, beans and other climbing plants.
• Add a water feature – traditional features such as a timber half-barrel or old-fashioned water pump are often used enhance the vegie garden. 
• Use attractive pots or ornaments as focal points.
• Train plants as topiary – plants trained and clipped to ornamental shapes add an element of fun to the garden. Clipped bay or citrus trees are well suited as topiaries in the vegetable garden.

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