…. Cline, former director of the Garden’s Kemper Center for Home Gardening, started the program in 1998. The botanical garden’s Pots to Planks program sells 6″ x 6″ timbers made from ground-up pots (No. 2 and No. 5 plastics). The rigid, heavy timbers are great for raised beds and strong enough to use for retaining walls. “They are fantastic,” Cline says. “It’s a lot of plastic in one product, but we&…
Since we launched the Kitchen Garden Planner in 2009, we’ve been hearing how people use it. Beginners find it helpful when starting a garden for the first time. Meanwhile, avid gardeners use it to create complex designs and keep records. Recently, we heard that the Peterson Garden Project, a community garden in Chicago, is using our online tool. LaManda Joy, founder of the Peterson Garden Project. Photo by Jennifer Stix. Since we la…
…ther is one of those formidable Yankees you hear about, and she takes her gardening seriously. When I was young, she had a vegetable garden that took up a third of our backyard. It had started out manageably enough as two 8 x 20-foot beds. But every year, under her foreman’s eye, we kids would tear up more sod and till cart-loads of manure into the exposed earth. Eventually it grew into a 2,400-square-foot mini-farm, with compost bins made…
We are taking photos to document the progress of gardens featured in our Kitchen Garden Planner. Watch the slideshow to see how they’re looking. If you’re growing a vegetable garden that you designed using our Kitchen Garden Planner, please add some photos of your garden to our online album. The Plant It and Forget It Garden on June 21. See it in our slideshow. Our Kitchen Garden Planner features eight pre-planned garden designs for 3…
ki. She is an expert gardener and possibly even a more expert networker. What a dynamo! Vicki and her husband Ron are both landscape architects. The Nowickis’ landscape business is called The Land Office. For the past 30 years they have been slowly but surely spreading the word about sustainable landscaping, biodiversity, native plants, permaculture and the value of local food production. They design gardens and landscapes, and also inst…
…couple took on vegetable gardening as a mid-life project, with the intention of eating healthier food and losing some weight, but in the midst of a pleasant summer of home-grown bounty they were told that city codes required 30 percent grass out front, and that they must reduce the size of their garden or pay substantial fines. See the transformation from grass to garden in a slideshow. Kitchen Gardeners International took up the couple’s…
…r our beautiful southern California weather. I live in Sunset garden zone 18, in the San Fernando Valley. Piper What about the white fencing? Decorative or functional? The fencing was for one reason, and her name is Piper, my 3-pound (at the time) black poodle mix puppy. As soon as I put the fencing in and planted my strawberry plants, Piper stuck her head through the fence pulled out one of the plants and ran like hell! Well at least she stopped…
Ellen Ecker Ogden’s design in progress, top, for the 2×8 Elevated Cedar Raised Bed, below, which features flowers. Ogden’s design, A Paint Box Garden of Edible Plants, features vegetables. If you’re a garden designer in Vermont, what do you do in the winter? If you’re creative, you design! Ellen Ecker Ogden, who created two designs for our Elevated Raised Beds, often uses rugs and carpets before refining the design w…
Just like an art museum, each time you visit a public garden there’s always something new to appreciate and inspire. The Japanese Garden in Portland, OR. Once springtime arrives and I’m finally out in the garden, it’s almost impossible to pry me away from home. I hate the thought of missing a single minute. When the weekend comes I’m up at 6 am Saturday and am still out there as darkness falls on Sunday night. I don’t min…
If you want your 2011 vegetable garden to produce more food for your table, planning is the key. No matter how much experience or growing space you have, taking time to map out your garden is the best way to maximize your efforts. If you want your 2011 vegetable garden to produce more food for your table, planning is the key. No matter how much experience or growing space you have, taking time to map out your garden is the best way to maxi…