Vegetable Garden Design
A vegetable garden must feature a design that compliments surrounding landscaping themes and home architecture. Most of our clients live in neighborhoods like West Houston Memorial, River Oaks, Westbury, and Rice Village. The stereotypical garden behind the house appears too rural and agrarian for such residences, so vegetable garden design in these areas requires a touch of sophistication with a number of special elements available only through professional landscaping services.
Traditional vegetable gardens feature little, if any, design per se. They tend to be rectangular areas plowed directly into the earth and are level with the surrounding soil. This creates a number of problems for both food crops and surrounding vegetation. Chemicals used to treat food crops can be highly toxic to indigenous plant life and wildlife. When heavy rains wash them into surrounding areas of the yard, they can poison flowers, exotic plants, native grasses, and even wash down the Houston bayous into sensitive ecosystems and wildlife areas.
To prevent this, we build all vegetable gardens in elevated planters. The typical planter is a completely self-contained structure with a bottom and walls that rise approximately 15” high above the ground. We prefer to build these planters out of pressure-treated pine because it offers a longer longevity than other types of wood and is remarkably effective for chemical containment. Fertilizers and pesticides used to protect food crops will not soak through this wood as they do other structures. It also prevents soil in the vegetable garden with mixing with surrounding soil, so each section of the garden can be designed with a highly specific soil mixture that offers maximum growth and preservative impact on the particular vegetable species being grown.
Another advantage gained from planting a garden within such a contained structure is convenient access. With crops and ornamental vegetation elevated to approximately knee level, a person tending the garden can sit comfortably in a lawn chair or on the planters themselves having to actually get in the dirt or stoop over and strain the back.
It is also much easier to irrigate a vegetable garden that is contained within a planter. A concealed system of irrigation pipes can be built into the design that will inconspicuously deliver water underneath the leaves of the plants. This prevents fungus from growing on them and makes for a much stronger aesthetic presentation as well. When people visit your home and admire your vegetable garden, they see only an attractive planter and healthy plants without the obtrusive eyesores of retail sprinkler systems and generic garden hoses that blast water in all directions out of their sides.
Drainage is a critical component of vegetable garden design. Drainage systems must be concealed in order to preserve the appearance of the garden. They must also be built with environmental friendliness in mind. As we noted earlier, many chemicals used to treat vegetables can be toxic to surrounding plants and animals, so water runoff must be carried out and away from the yard and deposited in areas where any solvent chemicals will not pose a threat to the environment. The professional landscape architects at Exterior Worlds know how to construct such drainage systems and can devise workarounds to any challenge presented by architecture or surrounding terrain.
When these practical concerns are addressed effectively, the aesthetic aspect of vegetable garden is opened up to endless possibilities. A vegetable garden can be built as a single square or rectangular element near an arbor, patio, or other outdoor seating area. Or, it can be built as a series of separate planters, each of which contains different selections of food crops. Still others are built to look like traditional, formal designs such as French or Italian gardens, or even special parterre gardens with rosebushes and other flowering plants lining the planter wall interiors.
There really is no limit on what size of style of garden we can design for a client provided the basic functional necessities can be integrated into the final outcome in a way that is workable and amenable for the surrounding yard and the architecture of the home and exterior structures.
Traditional vegetable gardens feature little, if any, design per se. They tend to be rectangular areas plowed directly into the earth and are level with the surrounding soil. This creates a number of problems for both food crops and surrounding vegetation. Chemicals used to treat food crops can be highly toxic to indigenous plant life and wildlife. When heavy rains wash them into surrounding areas of the yard, they can poison flowers, exotic plants, native grasses, and even wash down the Houston bayous into sensitive ecosystems and wildlife areas.To prevent this, we build all vegetable gardens in elevated planters. The typical planter is a completely self-contained structure with a bottom and walls that rise approximately 15” high above the ground. We prefer to build these planters out of pressure-treated pine because it offers a longer longevity than other types of wood and is remarkably effective for chemical containment. Fertilizers and pesticides used to protect food crops will not soak through this wood as they do other structures. It also prevents soil in the vegetable garden with mixing with surrounding soil, so each section of the garden can be designed with a highly specific soil mixture that offers maximum growth and preservative impact on the particular vegetable species being grown.
Another advantage gained from planting a garden within such a contained structure is convenient access. With crops and ornamental vegetation elevated to approximately knee level, a person tending the garden can sit comfortably in a lawn chair or on the planters themselves having to actually get in the dirt or stoop over and strain the back.
It is also much easier to irrigate a vegetable garden that is contained within a planter. A concealed system of irrigation pipes can be built into the design that will inconspicuously deliver water underneath the leaves of the plants. This prevents fungus from growing on them and makes for a much stronger aesthetic presentation as well. When people visit your home and admire your vegetable garden, they see only an attractive planter and healthy plants without the obtrusive eyesores of retail sprinkler systems and generic garden hoses that blast water in all directions out of their sides.
Drainage is a critical component of vegetable garden design. Drainage systems must be concealed in order to preserve the appearance of the garden. They must also be built with environmental friendliness in mind. As we noted earlier, many chemicals used to treat vegetables can be toxic to surrounding plants and animals, so water runoff must be carried out and away from the yard and deposited in areas where any solvent chemicals will not pose a threat to the environment. The professional landscape architects at Exterior Worlds know how to construct such drainage systems and can devise workarounds to any challenge presented by architecture or surrounding terrain.
When these practical concerns are addressed effectively, the aesthetic aspect of vegetable garden is opened up to endless possibilities. A vegetable garden can be built as a single square or rectangular element near an arbor, patio, or other outdoor seating area. Or, it can be built as a series of separate planters, each of which contains different selections of food crops. Still others are built to look like traditional, formal designs such as French or Italian gardens, or even special parterre gardens with rosebushes and other flowering plants lining the planter wall interiors.
There really is no limit on what size of style of garden we can design for a client provided the basic functional necessities can be integrated into the final outcome in a way that is workable and amenable for the surrounding yard and the architecture of the home and exterior structures.
Labels: Garden Design
posted by Jeff Halper at
5:44 AM
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