Garden Decor Planning

While it is true that a well designed and executed garden can in and of itself be beautiful art, I don't believe most homeowners attempting an edible garden have the where-with-all to pull it off.  On the other hand, I firmly believe that a vegetable garden does not need to be soldier rows of evenly spaced plants.

I confess.  I am an avid planner.  I like to start a project by creating an image of what I want to achieve.  It makes my life so much easier as I go along my merry and haphazard randomly wandering path of finishing the project.

Hmm,,,,,

On second thought, a garden project is never finished.  A state of more complete perhaps, but never completely finished.

Though a garden is never finished, certain things such as hard-scape and functional art can certainly come near to a state of final satisfaction.  I personally find it much easier on my pocketbook, and my senses, to have a broad plan of what I'm hoping to accomplish and how to get there.

First - find your inspiration.  Something that speaks to you.  Something that you will love as much this year, as next year and next generation.  Timeless joy.

Your inspiration piece becomes the hub of your garden decor wheel.  From this hub, think of the spokes that run out to the rim.  How will those spokes function?  What form will they take?  How will they look?  How will the spokes join together along the rim?

I want to incorporate edible gardens into as much of my front (east facing and more sun) yard as possible.  Since edible gardens are for the most part short lived annuals, I need to rely on the functional bits and pieces of the garden to provide most of the decor.  I will plan strategically placed long lived perennials to help bring the looks and art of the garden together.

If I could keep it alive and thriving, I would have a specimen size croton as my inspiration.  Sadly, our occasional hard freezes make that difficult to impossible.


My inspiration piece is pretty simple.  The boldness and elegance of lime green and purple.  A large lime green planter pot with purple cordyline and purple oxalis.  You can see it to the left in this photo.   I love how the lime green POPS out from the shades of green in the garden.  And how the purple contrasts with the lime green and brings its own beauty with its deep rich color. 

OK - so the purple oxalis wasn't planted when I took this picture.  Evolution at work in the garden ....

From my inspiration piece, I am choosing lime green as my predominant color for decoration.  Purple and a few bits of blue (because hubs loves the blue) will be accent colors.  I will wind lime green through the garden in punches however I can.  Well, within reason of course.  If I went off and painted everything lime green, then it would no longer be a punctuation.

Picking a color, and repeating it around the garden will help to bring order and continuity to the garden.  It will help your garden to be more visually appealing.

While I would have loved to run right out and buy a dozen large lime green planter pots, my pocket book and budget refused.  I did buy two more, so that I had a trio of lime green planters spaced along the front of the house.  Then I bought lime green paint.  I picked a lime green spray paint that I liked and had the paint counter mix a quart to match.  Then I put on my painters smock.  Painted garden objects I already owned, crawled thrift stores, and bought a few new clay pots.

Cleaning buckets.  Drill many holes.  Add soil and plants.

Painted clay pots.

Painted pot rim.  With matching lime green plant leaves!

Thrift store finds, holes drilled with a diamond tip bit and glued together.

Unconventional and Colorful.  Yes!

OK (above) - certainly functional.  But think how much better it could be with a set of color matching pops?  And your functional items in the garden that match your color choice serve double time on the garden design page!

I found a waterproof shower stool and painted ti lime green.  The shallow hanging bird bath is a clay pot saucer water sealed and painted.  And you can barely see in the far back an old ice cream chair spray painted.

I even found a trowel with a lime green handle!  * I like to buy inexpensive trowels to leave stuck in the ground in each garden so that I always have a trowel to hand for those quick jobs discovered while walking the garden.



This is, finally, the second part of the garden as art series that started with Beauty is.  Inspired by a post on Root Simple.

To start the series, I took a long view photo of my NE Garden.  I find it much easier to critique my own garden from a photo than from in person.  This is my 'before' photo.

I was pulling in lime green, but I was also mixing in other colors that I like.  I ruthlessly pulled out the other colors and replaced the functionality with lime green.  Actually, what I did was create a lime green garden, a lime green and purple garden, and a lime green and blue garden.  tee-hee.  And lastly, I got my lime green paint out and updated a few things.

Huzzah!  The current iteration of my NE garden.

Take a look at the things you need for functionality in your garden.  In mine it is: a permanent garden stool, large permanent pots, medium size seasonal pots and starter plant pots; hose guards for corners of the beds, water for wildlife, plant stakes, trellises and clutzy human grab bars.   Shopping, browsing and thrifting with a clear idea of my garden inspiration and the needs of my garden makes it so much easier for me to get things I need for the garden AT THE SAME TIME I get garden art/decor.  Jackpot!  A couple of for examples from the photo above - lime green plastic bowls from the dollar bin for starter plants and the hanging lime green lantern (lower left) providing the hose guard for the corner.

This NE garden is right on the street and is my primary full sun garden.  I want to grow edibles, many of which need full sun - this is my spot.  Generally, I try to plan and plant this garden as would any mixed perennial/annual garden design book recommend.  In fact, I like to look at garden design magazines showcasing a mixed ornamental garden to get ideas for my veggie garden.  I find it easier to plan the planting of the bed by thinking of the plants as ornamentals.  In other words, pick and grow the plant based on your tummy, but plant it based on your senses.

It should be pretty clear by now, that you don't want to plant your edible front yard in neat and tidy rows.  And you don't want rows of neat rectangular raised beds in your front garden.  Nor do you want to harvest your entire garden all at one time leaving a bare spot taunting the neighbors.

My goal is to always have something growing in the garden.  The garden at times might be a bit bare, but having a few long lived ornamental perennials mixed in with short lived perennial's and annuals helps keep something of interest going in the garden.  Starting replacement plants early and moving them up to half or gallon pots to grow up and be ready for replacing a harvested plant or leaving bolted blooming and/or seeding plants for wildlife are ways of keeping interest in the garden.  If you have the option, choose your edible plant varieties based on good looks as well as good eats.  For example, I grow Chinese 5 Color Pepper and Black Pearl Pepper for (1) good looks, (2) hot pepper vinegar and (3) squirrel deterrence.  Redbor Kale (pictured) is good to eat and more striking than standard green kale.

This garden is the entrance to our home, so we do want it to make a good impression, and we do want to work to keep it neat and tidy.  That doesn't mean I have the luxury to toil out there all day.  But I can go through and keep things a bit spruced, use folding garden fences to keep unruly plants from sprawling, and get creative on ways to grow indeterminate tomatoes and hide the the gangly vines.

Most of all, I guess I would say - be willing to experiment.  Be willing to try new ideas and toss out the old tried and trues.  Always keeping in mind a Garden's Clues to Care and your own garden inspiration.

Have you hugged your garden lately?  Told it how much you loved it?  Thanked it for the good eats it gives you?