An Attractive Vegetable Garden

The homeowners want a vegetable garden in their backyard but they want it to be attractive.

Before

Before

After

The best place for the garden is a corner of the property that's visible from both the house and the end of the driveway. Landscape designer Kay Bennett uses her landscaping creativity to create a vegetable garden that's as big on style as it is on substance.

The plan incorporates a vegetable garden within an ornamental garden, framed in the front by a decorative arbor and trellis-style fence for growing fruiting vines. The garden is laid out in a half-radius shape and enclosed by a holly hedge and shrub roses. Lending formality to the design, tree-form Burford hollies are placed symmetrically at each end of the fence sections. Boxwoods and flowering perennials flank the arbor. Upon entering the arbor, a wide central pathway passes plots of vegetable plantings and leads to a welcoming bench. A large strawberry jar, planted with thyme and mint, is the centerpiece for the herb garden. A nearby child's garden has a beanpole trellis and space to plant seeds, cherry tomatoes and marigolds.