Kitchen Garden Design. Planning and Designing a Kitchen Garden. Kitchen garden design can be as simple as placing a few pots of useful herbs close to the back door or planning and building a series of raised garden beds that will allow a wide range of herbs, vegetables and fruit trees to be planted and crops rotated as required. A kitchen garden can include composting facilities, worm farms and even an outdoor sink for washing produce. We provide some basic ideas for planning and designing a kitchen garden.
Every home has the space for a kitchen garden of some sort, from a pot of your favorite herbs grown on a window sill to a large garden with raised garden beds. When considering building a kitchen garden you should consider your needs, the time you are prepared to spend maintaining a kitchen garden and the practicality of building a large or small kitchen garden.
If it all sounds to hard, start small with some pots of herbs and maybe some salad greens such as Uruguay or 'salad rocket' or maybe a pot of basil or parsley, all easy to grow and they do not take up much space. Start with something you will use, and then add to it.
Larger kitchen gardens will require some planning, we provide a list of considerations rather than plans as such:
proximity to the kitchen, a kitchen garden close to the kitchen, with easy access will get more use than one that is located a long way away.
size, a big garden sounds great, and if you are a keen gardener and the rest of the family are willing to help maybe this is the way to go, if not, start small and allow for expansion
raised garden beds or not ? Raised garden beds are great, not so much bending, generally they are 'no dig' and they can look great. However they are more expensive. If in doubt start with some simple ground level dug beds and maybe add some raised beds as you become more confident
large or small garden beds, remember that access is the key to any garden, wide garden beds are difficult to manage, try something no more than a meter across.
Favorite plants for kitchen gardens.
This will differ from person to person and will depend on climate, our favorites are
Herbs for the kitchen garden
parsley
basil
sage
rosemary
thyme
Leafy Vegetable for the kitchen garden
Salad Rocket
Lettuce
Endive
Mizuna
Radicchio
Other favorites
tomatoes
potatoes
new zealand yams
pumpkins
peas (snow peas)
beans
Raised corrugated iron kitchen garden
Raised Garden Beds for a Kitchen Garden.
Kitchen gardens lend theme selves to raised garden beds, and with raised garden beds the alternatives are growing each year. Substantial masonry (brick) garden beds have been used for many years, however timber, corrugated iron and even recycled PCV are all all alternatives.
Consider modular kitchen gardens, readily available online or from nurseries, some of these even come with watering systems and small igloos (hothouse) that allow the gardening season to be extended.
Garden Plants for : Sydney (New South Wales - NSW), Brisbane (Queensland - QLD), Melbourne Victoria VIC), Adelaide (South Australia - SA), Perth (Western Australia - WA), Hobart (Tasmania - TAS), Darwin (Northern Territory - NT) and Canberra (ACT)
