the Potager Garden

Pear Ridge Restaurant Tasmania

I teach organic gardening and permaculture and I'm fascinated by French-style potager gardens.

Given the current economic situation, more and more people are turning to their own kitchen gardens just outside the back door to grow fresh produce for the kitchen table, so there is a resurgence of interest in home food gardens.

The idea of a carefully designed garden - there as much for its beauty and form as its function, really appeals to me.

Its a challenge to have anything neat in the garden here in the subtropics where things get out of hand quite quickly over summer, but in the cooler climates a tidy little kitchen garden would be perfect.

The name Potager is derived from the French potage meaning soup, they are often quite geometrical in design (great if you're house is double storey and you can look over the garden) but within those lines you'll often find curves and keyholes. The soup / garden link would probably come from what I call my 'all of garden' soup - being able to fill your harvest basket with armsfull of leafy greens and herbs that go straight into a tasty soup.

A potager garden is designed to supply the home with fresh salad greens, leafy vegetable greens (kale, spinach etc), seasonal vegetables and herbs.

Also incorporated are flowers - for their beauty, to be picked and arranged in the home and for their pest management qualities (carefully selected flowering plants can be used to deter pests, to attract beneficial insects and to bio-fumigate the soil as part of organic disease management strategies).

Edible flowers of course can also be harvested and added to salads for extra colour.

Potager gardens often feature fruit trees. A dwarf lemon tree (perhaps a 'lots of lemons' variety?) in a beautiful big pot in the centre will add a sense of style and formality to the garden too. They also often feature espaliered fruit trees, sometimes dwarf varieties, arbors and trellising.