Several years ago I had the great fortune to visit Villandry, a wonderful country chateau in the Loire Valley in France. I was fascinated with the formal beds, edged in boxwood and studded with vegetables, growing in patterns. I spent most of a day there, exploring the estate and looking at the wonderful beds of vegetables from every vantage point.
The memory of that wonderful garden at Villandry came to mind last spring (May, 2008), when I happened to visit Powell Gardens, a botanical garden about 30 miles outside of Kansas City. The staff at Powell Gardens had re-created small beds of Villandry-inspired vegetables as part of the build-up to the opening of their new Heartland Harvest Garden, a demonstration garden to show what fruits & vegetables gardeners in the area can grow.
Here is a pic I took last spring.
OK - so much for the background. This spring I decided I'd try my own version of the "Villandry look". I didn't start in March (as I should have) and probably didn't select the perfect location (this bed only gets a few hours of sun, but it's the only bed where I had any room), but given all the caveats, I finally planted the bed May 31. The intersecting rows are two varieties of lettuce (the only varieties I could find in bulk, this late in the game) and where they intersect, I placed a white begonia (in a vegetable garden? - "form over function"!). The centers of the diamond shapes are cauliflower (all I could find this late) and the tomato plants form an axis down the center.
The large pot in the center is a hibiscus I had wintered in my basement and didn't want on the patio - it doesn't "go", but it's here to stay.
To my surprise, the lettuce was up in a week. Here's how it looks after 9 days.
That is going to be so cool. Love it.
Awesome!
I read somewhere once that when you plant like that it confused the HECK out of the bugs too...so they don't settle in and chew on any one thing. Something to do with all the intermingled scents. Don't know if it's true...but.. I read it.
Wow that is neat , please keep showing us the progress.
Are you going to eat this or is it just for looks?
It's for both. Starting this late, I'm not sure how much lettuce I'll harvest before it bolts, but the tomatoes are definitely for my consumption (I've never been able to grow tomatoes before - the squirrels always beat me to them. Now I have two cats and the squirrels are all 'visiting the neighbors'). I love cauliflower, but if all 16 heads produce, I may get tired of it - LOL. I planted nasturtiums across the back, near the trees, in hopes that I could get a few blooms for salads.
Wow.... I think this is going to be beautiful. Good for you for following through on an idea.
Like it. Please keep posting photos.
Hi, I was looking at a book with a lot of potager ideas and thought it was so neat,but seemed very difficult... I love how you have made yours. It is really creative and elegant. Inspiring! keep posting pictures!
leawoodgardner,you go girl,thats soo cool,we will be waiting on future photos,wish I had flat ,sun,area to plant,nice work as always.
Oh how beautiful!
Please post pictures at least once a week--I can't wait to see how this develops!
I love Villandry and your new project idea, Leawood! Very clever and different!
For those like me who are interested in potagers and French gardening here is a link to one of my favorite sites:
http://www.frenchgardening.com/visitez.html?pid=31106784011481
Please post pics of what your garden looks like now. What a neat idea.
Oh wow, I enjoyed looking at all of the photos and the above link too.
Brings back alot of memories for me of my trips to Europe and all the beautiful formal gardens there. Please do post more photos as the plants grow.
Happy Gardening, Marian
Here's the latest - the tomatoes are blooming, but the lettuce is struggling in the heat (97 yesterday and supposed to hit 98 today with 110 heat index)... and so am I! If it looks a little foggy, it's just the camera lens fogged over with the high humidity!
Very nice. What a great idea.
Just dropped by to watch the beginning of your story.... very nice!
It looks great!
What a beautiful idea. I really love your version. Please keep posting pictures. I don't think that I would want anyone to pick anything.
What a fantastic idea! You'll have to try it again next year if not all the plants work out for you this year.
Here's how it looks today - the lettuce is not performing (too hot!) and the bugs have chewed the cauliflower, but the tomatoes are starting to form.
Lesson learned: plant the lettuce and other veggies in March - NOT in June!
Well, I must say this experiment has been a 'bust'. I've had a few tomatoes and learned when NOT to plant veggies. I decided to pack it in this week. Immediately after taking this pic, I pulled up everything and called a guy to come over a till the garden so I could get ready to plant tulips.
I gave it a good layer of composted horse manure and had him till it twice to get a good mix. Here's what it looked like when he was done. I'm ready to plant tulips and give it a layer of mulch.
Thanks for sharing your project with us!
Is that boxwood in the front of your bed? What kind is it and do you have to prune it frequently?
Thanks!
Leawood, are you going to try again next year? I loved your ideas! I did a French potager too, but not a formal one - more of a mixture of flowers and veggies, and I staked my tomatoes on bamboo tripods the way I've admired them doing in the South of France. I started early so it worked pretty well but I still ended up with more weeds than I'd like.
I have ordered from the site that Tabasco gave the Villandry link for. The beans I got, Pelandron, were great and very productive, so I have saved seeds from them each year and have grown them for awhile now. Here's part of my garden, in July.
The boxwood is "Winter Gem" - one of three varieties I can say are readily available and dependable in this climate. The others are "Winter Green" and "Green Velvet". I've tried others like "True English" and found they couldn't take the zone 5 climate. "Winter Gem" is a hardy grower - I usually trim it 3-4 times during the season (May-October).
A few years ago I came across some unusual boxwood at the Home Depot store I frequent. I liked it for it's tiny leaf and compact habit - the variety was "Justin Brouwer", and they only had 12 plants, so I bought them all as an experiment. It was October when I bought them and I figured if they made it through the winter, I'd use that variety somewhere in a hedge. The plants came through the winter without losing so much as a leaf, so I started asking around at local nurseries to see if I could find the variety (the folks at Home Depot had no clue about it and said they cannot 'order' specific plants, they just set out whatever they receive). It is very tough, compact and slow-growing - perfect for a hedge you don't want to trim every eight weeks.
None of the local nurseries had ever heard of the variety and nobody seemed interested in finding and ordering it, so I gave up and used "Winter Gem" for the hedge around this garden.
A very astute gardener on the Dave's Garden site suggested I contact a nursery in Kentucky - Pine View Nursery (www.pineviewnursery.com). They were not only familiar with the variety, they offered to grow me whatever quantity I wanted! Just about when I heard from them, the bottom fell out of the economy, my income dropped 65% and my investments disappeared, so I put a large hedge project on 'hold' (I guess you could say my 'hedge funds' disappeared - LOL). I'm saving the variety name, however, and WILL use it sometime/somewhere in my garden.
I'm planting mayflowering tulips in this bed, so I probably won't try the vegetables again next year. If I had a space where I could plant the veggies early (March), I think it would be more successful. I wouldn't be able to plant tomatoes that early, but I could do the lettuces, cabbage and kale in pattern. I like the bamboo tepee stakes for your tomatoes - my single stakes were not a success - the tomatoes were all over the place.
It's a shame you don't have space for the earlier planting; the idea was wonderful!
I plant a tomato at the base of each bamboo pole in the tripod but I also prune them quite a bit and tie them so they grow up the pole. I'm going to try growing fewer varieties and leave more room for each plant next year and see if they're more productive that way, though. I think I get some sort of virus which affects some of them, and maybe more space would help.
greenhouse, I love your idea in the back, with the teepee and the sticks going across the top. What do you use for the stick that is so tall. It's giving me an idea for all my morning glories next year! Can I see a close up of it?
LiliMerci, I found 8 ft bamboo poles at AM Leonard, I think it was. I ordered them online. The crosspieces aren't the same length or quality; we took them from friends who had bamboo groves. Let me know if this photo helps - otherwise I'll take another one for you. What specifically would you want to see?
Thanks. That's a good enough photo. I wanted to see how you did the crosspole. Thanks. What a great idea. I am already doing something similar to this but only in a flower pot and I used the tall bamboo tomato stakes. I'm thinking if they are high enough, I can do something like a walk under arbor and plant my Morning Glories to climb up this pole! I'm so excited. Thanks for the great idea.
LiliMerci, it's not my idea; the gardens in France, in the Aude where we visited a couple of years running, used the tripods, or sometimes quadrapods, for their tomatoes. Since I was growing French varieties it seemed fitting to borrow their methods, and besides I love the way their gardens look! I'm sure it would also work for morning glories; we have some trying to take over our raspberries. I love them and DH hates them!
LOL! They are quite invasive. I planted most of them in containers, except 2 vines. The 2 Japanese Morning Glories that I planted in the ground are climbing up my New Dawn rose now, but New Dawn is a house eater anyway, so it doesn't matter. I'm getting ready to cut back ND. It's out of control.
