14 Gorgeous Kitchen Gardens

Looking for a way to make your kitchen garden as beautiful as it is useful? These examples of beautiful edible gardens will inspire you.

By: Felicia Feaster

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An Elegant and Orderly Kitchen Garden

Famed designer, lifestyle doyenne and gardener extraordinaire Bunny Williams keeps a kitchen garden at her Connecticut home that would make harvesting an aesthetic pleasure. See more of Bunny's beautiful gardens in her reissued book Bunny Williams: On Garden Style.

Trellis Time

Soldierly rows of trellises and neat raised beds give Atlanta lifestyle author Danielle Rollins' potager a defined, neat appearance. Marigolds in the edible garden are a natural way to keep pests away and also add a touch of beauty.

Edible Garden

Author Danielle Rollins has an extensive edible garden devoted to many heirloom varieties. In her garden you can find Bibb, buttercos, Valentine and Tom Thumb lettuce; Jaune du Doubs and Lunar White carrots; Red Tuscan and Siberian kale; red and golden raspberries; several blueberry varieties; Blue Lake green beans; sweet Georgia and Texas onions; purple hull beans; blackberries; bell peppers; cucumbers; strawberries; sweet corn; apple, peach and plum trees and many other varieties. She also grows Meyer lemons, limes and kumquats planted in pots, which she can move indoors when the weather turns cold.

Elegant Herb Garden

A well designed herb garden has the extra advantage of being placed right outside this kitchen door for easy access. Some kitchen gardens emphasize geometric rows and crisp lines, while others feature herbs and lettuces in discrete groups, as seen here.

Beautiful Edible Garden

This beautiful edible garden benefits from a perimeter of boxwood and sparse plantings of edibles that create a dynamic design out of lettuces, squash and other vegetable garden standards.

Edible Design

Lettuces, beans and squash are planted in an almost architectural style, in small, distinct groupings in this unique injection of style into an edible garden's design.

Vertical Edible Gardening

Herb walls are becoming popular ways of gardening vertically. Grid systems like this one are available commercially on a smaller scale for homeowners with tight spaces. Make sure the wall has good southern or western exposure for the sunlight herbs require.

Thomas Jefferson's Garden

Thomas Jefferson's influential Monticello vegetable garden sets the bar high for deriving aesthetic beauty from growing edibles.

Making Edible Elegant

Neatly defined growing in raised beds and a perimeter of pea gravel make this kitchen garden feel orderly and the produce easy to access.

Edible and Interesting

A brick walkway intersects the herb and vegetable garden in Atlanta gardener Rosie Davidson’s space. Davidson grows tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, onion, squash and herbs, including basil and comfrey, a medicinal herb that is abundant in England.

When Space Is Tight

An edible garden can work even in a small apartment or condo. Just grow your edibles in a colorful window box and plant a mix of colors and textures.

Think Edible in the Front Yard

When planted with an emphasis on good design, herbs and edible plants can make a delicate and attractive front garden.

Intensive Gardening

A formal garden at the urban cottage of P. Allen Smith in Little Rock, Arkansas, showcases several intensive gardening practices, including raised beds, containers and interplanting. Planting spring vegetable seeds around tulips is an especially clever idea that combines edible and ornamental gardening.

Cabbage and Flowers

Contrasting shapes and textures make an edible / ornamental garden interesting. This red cabbage, with broad, flat leaves, makes an attractive companion for yellow flowers on long, graceful stems.

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Photo By: Image courtesy of Stewart, Tabori & Chang

Photo By: Image courtesy of Ben Rollins

Photo By: Photo by Angela West

Photo By: Image courtesy of Robert Llewellyn.

Photo By: Image courtesy of Ben Rollins

Photo By: Photo by Angela West

Photo By: Image courtesy of Serenbe.

Photo By: Photo by Jane Coclasure courtesy of P. Allen Smith.

Photo By: Courtesy of P. Allen Smith and Kelly Quinn