Although I am not familiar with your climate and what grows there, here are some ideas. Thymes, bell peppers, tomatoes, tepees with green beans, a rose bush would be pretty, some glads in with the irises and n.l. belladonnas. A pic might be helpful if you have one. Hopefully others will chime in with their ideas too.

Becky

You don't mention if you have any trees at all in this area. What might be nice if you could place them so that they wouldn't shade anything too much would be a couple of dwarf or semi-dwarf fruit trees.

Pears would work for you and they are one of the very few fruit that don't require lots of spray. Tyson and Seckel are dwarfs naturally and are delicious. You might check out what would work in your area.

Stacie,
Your DD would love having strawberries!

MeMo

Right now I have quite a few strawberries planted in this bed. I thought about planting some herb plants to boarder the bed. It gets enough shade that I think tomatoes wouldn't do too well. I think that the idea of the bean teepees would bring a strong vertical look into the garden.

Stacie

What about a trellis with some ornament gourds? It would add height and color. How old is the DD? My little boy loves eating carrots, raspberries, strawberry and peas straight from the garden. You might try these for your DD. Strawflowers and snapdragons were another favorite.

Donna

My DD#1 will be 3 this summer and DD2 will be 1 in July. I think that we will add some goards in this garden this summer. The garden is unusual in itself being in the front walk and beibg the first thing you see in the front of our house.

Stacie

You have your hands full Stacie! A one year old and three year old will keep you very busy. Our veggie garden is in the front yard too. We have 10 acres and the only place that has full sun and access to water is smack square in the middle of the front yard! Thats why I was soooo excited about this forum...I wanted ideas to make my square, straight-rowed garden into something that is eye appealing since it is the first thing people see when they pull into the yard.

Donna

When I lived in Portland, OR, years (decades) ago, I had a front-yard potager too-- also because it was the only place that got sun. It was also basically wasted space that went through a series of landscaping attempts before I finally decided to make it a formal potager for my sunny herbs and food plants. It was about 25x25 feet square.

I took out all the dorky groundcover stuff and fenced the area with a short wood and wire fence, double dug the whole thing (heavy clay soil) and added some good rotted manure. It had a circle in the center, with a birdbath, four blueberry bushes at the cardinal points, with strawberries in between. There were four "arc" beds around it, and then narrow beds along the fence that framed it all. I laid wood chips (free from the city) on the paths. All the beds were planted with a combo of food and flowering plants, just crammed together. It was so pretty! I wish I still had the photos of it, I'd post one here.

People used to stop and take pictures of it, and when I taught organic gardening at the community center, I'd bring my classes to my house to show them what could be done. Hardly anyone in that neighborhood grew ANYTHING, so my garden really stood out.

Dayle Ann

Has anyone tried strawberries in strawberry jars? I happen to have 4 of them, and I thought I'd set them on the porch steps.

I think that's a great idea to put it in the front yard. So many European potager/kitchen gardens are located in the front yard. I think the whole front lawn thing is almost uniquely American. Having the garden in front is more attractive and more social. A few miscellaneous suggestions:

1) Bright Lights swiss chard. Very ornamental for your front yard potager, and nutritious and tasty to boot.

2) Ground cherries (also known as husk cherries). Not cherries at all - do a google search and you'll find out more. Recommended because little kids go crazy for them. Last year our kids would run outside every day to check if any more ground cherries had ripened overnight.

3) Kohlrabi. Tame little plants, unusual shape adds visual interest. Plus they're yummy, and I just generally think people should eat more kohlrabi. :-)

4) Onions. A bag of 100 onion sets will cost you a whopping 99 cents. Harvest some of them while young as green onions and let some of them mature to full size. Plant some every week or so for the first 6 weeks so you will have a constant supply of green onions.

Good luck!

-Diggity