Front Yard Veggie Garden
From Hell Strip to Epic Garden in a few weeks
Our front yard has not been all that attractive, and honestly in the six years since we moved here, we didn’t do all that much to make it a better place. That is — until this summer! We started on a HUGE project dedicated to both increasing our curb appeal and making better, more productive use of our property.
A huge part of this transformation is our new Wildlife Garden which is coming along beautifully. It has been absolutely gorgeous this summer, and it is growing in much more quickly than I expected. Bonus! You can see all of the Wildlife Garden progress in the section devoted to Wildlife Garden updates.
But that’s not all!
We also had this horrible gravel strip in the front — a total eyesore, frankly! I’ve been trying to decide how to use that space, but it is more complicated than you might think. The gravel is more than a foot deep in places. Removing it and disposing of it would have been expensive. And if we removed it, we then would need to fill it in with LOTS of soil — more expense.
The Before: not attractive. Really not attractive.
Cleared but still not attractive.
I entertained the idea of a gravel garden, but there is black plastic under the gravel. A gravel garden generally rests over soil so that the roots of the plants, while deep, eventually end up in soil. Impossible in this location. Additionally, previous homeowners used to park their boats and cars here, so there is the very real possibility of contamination. And the gravel here is large — not the kind of gravel usually used in a gravel garden.
So, take a look at the before, the after and how I got there, too!
All of that together means it took me six years to decide what to do: very tall raised beds for a potager garden.
Potager? It’s a vegetable garden interplanted with flowers and herbs in a classic French style.
Very neat.
Very tidy.
Very organized.
And very yummy!
It’s too late in the year to plant out our potager garden, though I have planted garlic and some frost-tolerant greens. Next summer, though, I’m really excited to see what this can become!
