vegetable gardens

I used to have a vegetable garden. It occupied a space of about 15 by 25 feet across the path from two perennial beds. It was (and for that matter, still is) laid out in a pattern of diagonally bisected squares I had copied after reading an article about Rosemary Verey’s garden in England. (By the way, the triangular beds that result from this are the devil to dig and plant).

There is an apple tree (Yellow Transparent) almost but not quite in the centre of the back part of the patch. It’s surrounded by different kinds of mint, with a solitary clump of fennel to one side. A triangle in the middle of the layout is occupied by plants of lavender, hyssop and thyme. Others host rue, oregano, echinacea and more mint, while one triangle is given over to a couple of rhubarb plants. Vegetables (tomatoes, spinach, chard, lettuce and peas) used to grow in the space that remained.

After a few years, I noticed that the tomato plants were smaller every year, and less productive. The soil was always dry. The obvious reason was the two Norway maples 20 feet to the west of the veg patch, and the Ailanthus (“Tree of Heaven”) to the north. These tough, pushy trees were sending roots into the patch and hogging the water and nutrients.

The obvious cure for this unhappy situation was removal of one or all of the trees. Tree removal, however, is costly and disruptive. The trees are still there and the vegetable patch is now the ex-vegetable patch. Self-sown quasi-weeds (campion, toadflax, echinops and mulleins) have moved in, along with plants I’ve moved there for lack of better places, such as spare echinaceas and a big mauve dahlia whose old spot had become inhospitable. I’ve also parked some potted delphiniums and lilies near the feeble (but intensely fragrant) rose “Fragrant Cloud,” which also lives in a pot.

Right now, despite the drought and possibly because of the hot summer, the ex-veg patch looks pretty good.

Potted Delphinium and potted “Stargazer” lily

Transplanted mauve Dahlia and self-sown Echinops.

Second set of blooms on rose “Fragrant Cloud” and new growth on potted Delphinium.

The Ex-Vegetable Patch today

What about vegetables, you ask? Well, there are four potted tomatoes, along with all the other stuff. (Of course, tomatoes are technically fruits, but that’s OK).

This winter I will have to decide whether to keep my vegetable garden (actually more of a vegetable patch) or re-purpose it. It has become too shady and infested with tree roots to be a suitable piece of ground in which to grow vegetables, apart from peas, lettuce, spinach and scarlet runner beans (which are surprisingly tolerant of difficult conditions). Tomatoes, cucumbers and anything else that requires full sun and fertile soil have been a total failure the past two or three years, despite dutiful digging-in of compost, manure, lime and other goodies.

It’s such a bad time to give up on growing vegetables! What with the “hundred mile diet” and the craze for locally grown food, vegetable gardens have become fashionable. (Garden fashions — a topic for a future post). Having had a vegetable garden — or at least a patch — for the past 25 years, it’s hard to throw in the trowel.

The trouble is that there are few things sadder than a sad vegetable garden. It’s a total contradiction. Vegetable gardens should be orderly, prosperous and lush. A perennial or mixed border grown in less than ideal conditions can be attractive despite its lack of perfection (I know this because I have such borders), but a vegetable garden of runty, struggling, unproductive plants is an offense to the eye.

I have two exemplars of perfection when it comes to vegetable gardens, both featured years ago in Horticulture magazine. The first is (or was) the garden of Peter Chan, in Portland, Oregon. The article’s title is “Peter Chan’s Perfect Patch,” (Horticulture, May 1985) and perfect it was, although clearly more than a “patch.” The garden was framed by wonderful paths made from stones dug up in the course of its making, and the raised beds were separated by narrow walkways of packed earth. The rows of plants were arrow-straight, weedless and healthy. Bean and pea trellises were solidly constructed, not shaky makeshifts cobbled together from assorted oddments. The whole place was groomed and managed to perfection, practical and beautiful in its orderliness.

My other ideal when it comes to vegetable gardens is that of Rosemary Verey, as written up in the July 1987 issue of Horticulture. Influenced by the jardin potager at the Chateau de Villandry, it features stone walls and an intricate layout of square and triangular beds separated by paths of brick and tile radiating from the centre of a 60 by 60 foot square. The vegetables were grown in blocks, artistically combined with herbs, espaliered fruit trees and the occasional clipped shrub. Details such as alternating red- and green-leafed lettuces and ripening onion tops arranged in parallel lines put the final touch on perfection.

I had a better situation for growing vegetables in my first garden, in the 1980s. The soil was a fat clay loam, difficult to dig but richer than the lean sandy loam of my current garden. Shade and tree roots were not a problem. One year I had a wheelbarrow full of carrots and every year a freezer full of green beans. Tomatoes brought indoors before frost lasted until Christmas. Those were the days.

Here I did at least attempt a layout of my 15 x 30 foot patch a la Ms. Verey, dividing the space into two diamond shapes and six triangles. But my brick paths are too narrow to be practical, due to a shortage of bricks. Then there’s the awkwardly placed apple tree and all the volunteer and spreading plants that I have failed to discipline over the years — various mints, mulleins, violets, Corydalis lutea and Echinops ritro. There just isn’t a lot of space left for vegetables. And I use part of the patch as a temporary storage area for finished compost. The shade and tree roots are the final blow.

Less-than-perfect vegetable patch

This year I grew my tomatoes in big pots parked in a number of sunny spots around the place. This was a success (or would have been if not for a late, cold spring and cool summer) and I intend to do it again next year. I will probably grow peas, lettuces, spinach and the tolerant runner beans again, but I admit that my vegetable growing aspirations have been considerably scaled back.