What is a Potager Garden?

A potager garden is a vegetable garden which is designed to be attractive as well as functional. Such gardens are designed to strike people with their beauty first, rather than being relentlessly practical, and they can fit in a wide variety of spaces and climates. When well-designed, a potager garden can satisfy a lot of the vegetable needs for a household, as well as pleasing the eye. The concept of the potager garden is French. In France, there is a long tradition of laying out practical gardens in a way which is also aesthetically pleasing. Along the way, gardeners often increase the yield of their gardens, and they may utilize advantageous plant pairings which help deter pests and enrich the soil. By contrast, the traditional English or American kitchen garden tends to be more stark, laid out with a purely practical eye. While the focus of a potager garden is vegetables, these gardens can also include herbs and edible flowers. The garden design can be incredibly varied as well, ...  more