Couldn't agree with you more, what's in a name? My question is what's in your vision?

For me, raised beds are a good thing. I grow food for the food. If it happens to be pretty food, so much the better but I won't grow it if we won't actually eat it. I like my trellis' to be attractive but not too tall. I like olden day things as decorations, in my gardens. I like rustic, I can't do white cuz I live on a cattle ranch but I enjoy looking at other's cottage white gardens. I've never grown flowers in with my food crops but I will when ever I get my flower beds all filled in the way I want them. I guess we all have our darn budgets to deal with. Wishing you the best as you venture into gardening in your new home!

MeMo

I think that potager includes vegetables, herbs and flowers. Quite often planted with design in mind. I like to plant edible flowers such as nasturtiums, calendula and pansies. There are many more. I also see so much beauty in beets, purple kolhrabi, eggplant, curley parsely, bronze fennel, peppers.

A kitchen garden in my opinion is basically the same concept just that potager is a French term. Now a vegetable garden seems to be more the traditional with rows.

I like to call mine a potager just because I think its a fun name.

Michelle

I thought potager was the combination of veggies herbs and flowers too. I am going to call mine that too only it really will be a container garden. Guess I will have to haunt both forums to get the best information from each.

I thought potager was supposed to have a pretty little fence around it. That will not work here either with the lay of the land at this point. Maybe later when I get some grass growing and some more head boards.

We are also on a brand new half acre with basically no landscaping. I got some done last summer and fall . Not as much as hoped. There are tulip bulbs starting to come up. Spring is close here. Snow is almost gone.

Chris

When one thinks of a "potager", it's of a fenced, formal garden of mixed veggies and flowers. But I like the way it's defined by Wikipedia better, because then mine meets the criteria!

"A potager is a French term for an ornamental vegetable or kitchen garden. Often flowers (edible and non-edible) and herbs are planted with the vegetables to enhance the garden's beauty. The goal is to make the function of providing food aesthetically pleasing.

Plants are chosen as much for their functionality as for their color and form. Many are trained to grow upward. A well-designed potager can provide food, cut flowers and herbs for the home with very little maintenance. Potagers can disguise their function of providing for a home in a wide array of formsÂfrom the carefree style of the cottage garden to the formality of a knot garden."

Based on this, my little 4x7 raised bed supplimented with pots is definately a potager!

They don't call America a melting pot for nothing. A "potager" in the original french form was a walled garden consisting of very geometric raised beds laid out on symetrical axis (axes?) that grew fruit, herbs, vegetables, and flowers for the use of the house or estate. Fruit trees were often espaliered around the perimeter, the veggies were mixed with the flowers, herbs were grown for medicinal purposes as well as for eating. Monks in cloisters were some of the earliest potager makers, with each monk tending a small area. And, of course, the very wealthy had massive, and very ornate potagers.

I think the term "kitchen garden" would include only veggies, pot herbs, and fruit. It might be planted formally and for beauty, and it might not.

Then, of course, the American vegetable garden that most of us have always known was strictly utilitarian, designed and laid out like a mini farm, in rows, for the exclusive purpose of providing food in season, plus plenty of canned or frozen food for the rest of the year. Nothing wrong with that at all, or with any of them, for that matter.

And now all these concepts are melting together here in America (and probably other parts of the world too). The walls have become fences or hedges (or none). The beds are planted in formal style, cottage style, or any combination of the two. And then, in the interest of space, we are throwing in pots, either as accents, or as the main event. We're really good at re-defining things, aren't we?

I think you may want to haunt all three forums, and draw ideas from all. Put them into your own eclectic mixer and come up with a garden that makes you happy. I suppose we all have our own reasons for making gardens, but certainly, the pleasure we gain from them has alot to do with the way we build, plant, and maintain them. Make your potager your own way. No one will quibble with whether or not you fit the "definition".

wow, great ideas! i guess on the one hand, i sort
of like labels, they help define things, but on the
other hand, they can be limiting

i think, due to my rank as beginner, i'd like to find
a label that i can focus on

my maternal great grandparents immigrated from france,
and i've always been interested in the french way

don't ask me about my foray into french cooking

one thing i really would like, is a wee fence around
my future garden. i love the look, and can grow many
things on a fence

i think i might do a sort of hybrid type garden, maby
square foot meets potager

i'm waiting on my husband to build his storage shed
to see just how much room i'll have, then i plan to
get to work on fencing in and raising beds

thank you all so much for all the words of wisdom

tesa

My father's people were french too, so I have the same kind of interest. I could recommend a book for you if you are looking for more historical background plus design principles. Look for "Designing the American Potager" by Jennifer Bartley. I got mine from Amazon. (It may be titled "Designing the new American Kitchen Garden". I can't lay my hands on my copy right now to confirm. It's available on Amazon.

These are all good definitions. To me, I think of a potager as emphasizing the ornamental aspect of the kitchen garden just as much as the food. I've also read the square foot book and do square foot gardening for my smaller vegetables (lettuces, beets, carrots, etc.). But SFG isn't the prettiest because it's hard to have a cohesive design with so many different kinds of plants jammed into one space.

The book donnabaskets recommended is a good one. I also liked The Art of the Kitchen Garden by Jan Gertley. Both were very inspiring and helped me see how important repetition and structure are in a potager. With either of those books combined with the SFG book you could probably come up with something that works for you.

I started my garden with 2 SFG beds and have been adding a little every year. Right now, it looks nothing like a potager but there's a vision there and eventually I'll finish it...

Good luck getting started!

I didn't start out to make a potager, but slowly I seem to be heading in that direction. I decided to have raised beds so that I wouldn't have to worry about soil tests and the probable poor drainage. I'm not planting in rows because I'm trying to take as much advantage from companion planting as possible. The companion planting encourages herbs and flowers, but I find I'm too lazy when it comes to planning. Instead I'm going to make a mix of beneficials and scatter the seeds the way you do with wildflowers.

So, I think the end result will look potager-like, but that's more a matter of laziness than anything else.