Hi - Maybe you could place a pretty color pot in the middle of each bed and plant a small flower in each one - marigold, petunia, verbena, other types of annuals like that - and small enough that they will grow and you won't have to work with them much at all. You could even use plain terra cotta pots and paint them the colors you want, even all the same color.

Good luck with this. It sounds like you have a good-sized garden, I am envious! Be sure to post some pics when it's "done" (are they ever "done", really?) :)

Love the birdbath idea!

I have the same issue with some of my beds. I'm considering placing some stepping stones here and there. Not too many - just enough to allow access to the plants without having to perform acrobatic stunts. :)

I have a resin solar birdbath/fountain that I really, really love. It looks like stone (you need to touch it to verify it's resin) and works great as long as it's in full sun. (It's still pretty when it's not running.) But one warning about a birdbath - you'll still need to get into it to empty it to clean it and fill it. It would look lovely, however.

Maybe a sundial? Or, I saw this pretty cool whirlygig type thing in a cataolog.

Here is a link that might be useful: Wind Spinner

In the American Potager book, by Jennifer Bartley, she grows climbing beans, morning glories, and hyacinth beans on bamboo-type poles (which she painted blue) in the center of her beds. I think moon flowers, sweet peas and other vines would work well, too. It you don't want to worry about reaching them, concentrate on flowers that you don't have to harvest. The height will add a lot to any garden, as will the color, but you don't have to access them until after the veggies are done. Hope this helps :)

Perhaps evergreens for winter interest? Boxwood? Maybe tall annuals like amaranthus (Love Lies Bleeding) or tithonia (Mexican Sunflower)? Just throwing out ideas that haven't been mentioned. I like a lot of the ideas already shared!

Lisa

I am putting a dwarf apple tree in my potager now; it will not grow to more than 8-9 feet (and actually it's about there already). We already have a crabapple which will pollinate the new tree. Maybe one or two dwarf apple trees would be nice in your garden. If you get two different types so that one pollinates the other, you will have apples! And not have to tend those two plants very much. It would add vertical interest, and the blossoms are so pretty. They could go in the very center of your garden. Just a thought - I am biased, any excuse to plant a tree!

I like the idea of putting a block of flowers in the center. Maybe outlined with boxwood. I still haven't decided if I'm outlining the main beds in boxwood or brick or ???

I have circles between the squares and I was putting some garden art and planted things in those. Now I think I'm going to put those all into the centers of the blocks instead. So far I have these ideas:

scarecrow
teepee type of trellis that I'm growing a veggie up (I will have to walk in there to harvest)
a rusty iron tiered wagon thing that I'll plant with annuals and trailing plants
wooden barrel planted with pineapple sage and some other things
an iron wagon type of thing that I'm putting a planted galvanized tub on - it has a tall piece attached and I'll train an ornamental up that

I have 9 beds, so need 4 more ideas. I already have a lot of the ideas in other parts of this potager. For instance, I have sunflowers growing elsewhere, altho a bushy variety would look really great in one of the beds! I don't necessarily want everything in the center of these beds to be tall. I thought about a very large pot with trailing plants coming out of it. But those pots are very costly and I can't afford one right now.

Here is a photo of the general outline of the potager. We're dealing with the 9 filled in blocks. I have a long row of dahlias in the center. Some day I want to put an arbor in the center of that long row with built in seating. Then I want to have a small picket fence extending out from each side of the arbor bench that will be purely decorative to grow things up against.

And on the other side I have 6 squares that are laid out in alternating rows. I wanted to give it sort of a patchwork quilt kind of look. If you're flying overhead. Which so many people often do. LOL

So those 4 round circles in the middle of the 9 blocks won't be there as I'll put those objects in the centers instead.

I love the idea of the birdbath but a friend pointed out I'd have to be careful as I'd get bird droppings all over the plants in that area. Not so appetizing! I'm also not 100% sure I want to attract birds to this area. We have birds everywhere as it is.

We have an orchard. It actually grows along one side of the potager. We have a LOT of trees, more than 20. I can never even remember.

We're very sun-challenged here so I don't want to put anything in the potager that's going to cast shade.

Oh man, I am so jealous!! You have an orchard, a chicken run, and now this stunning design for a potager!! Love it. Can't wait to see pictures! I know I'm no help at all but I just wanted to put in my praise and salivations ;)

I think it was mentioned before, but you could put some stepping stones in the beds. Perhaps different arrangements across the beds to divide the larger beds into smaller areas. Each bed could have its own design depending on what you like and what's going to be planted. Also, a long angled trellis for cukes/melons so you have less distance to reach in and harvest. I like the ideas you've proposed. If you do the tepees, you could always throw in a stepping stone to get in there to grab your beans.

BTW, I love that you have a chicken run in the garden. The dahlia row is such a neat idea too. What is the overall size of your garden?

It is roughly 40 x 60 feet. It's not an exact rectangle. It gets smaller at one end than the other.

I did think about some stepping stones. Esp after I saw these really cool ones in another garden that are painted to look like various veggies. But they were not for sale. :( I also thought about laying planks down to step on. Either one could be covered with vegetation. Otherwise, it would completely change the overall look of the garden. But it's definitely a possibility. I guess I just need to get out there and do each bed one by one and figure it out as I go. Yesterday we planted in the new dahlias and attached the drip lines to the underground irrigation. We also hooked up the irrigation for the garlic bed, which was planted last fall. I haven't turned on the water yet; I'm hoping for rain sometime today but so far, nada. I also have the onion bed planted. I planted an entire 6 x 8 bed because someone gave me a bundle of 50 onion starts and I had to use every inch. I'm going to harvest every other one early and use them as green onions.

I'll try and take photos sometime during the summer when it isn't covered in weeds and junk!

That's 2400 square feet. Lol, almost as big as my house! Did you ever mention what you use in your paths?

I like to put my onions/leeks as dividers down the center of my beds. Most of my onions are the bunching green onion type so I pull and use as the summer goes on. It's a first for leeks so we'll see what happens.

I keep thinking of more questions. How many chickens do you have? It must be really neat to be out in the garden when they're in their run.

Now that you mention it, it is bigger than our house! I never thought of it that way.

I use good old dirt in my paths. ;) Someday I may get to something better. In the meantime, they are easy to hoe (except right now when they're covered in tall weeds) and I hope to move the chicken fence around to let the chickens have some of that weeding fun.

That's a good idea about using the onions and leeks for the centers of the beds. I may give that a try next year.

We have 7 hens. Right now they are in the back of the property. The potager is not near the house and we didn't want to be going out there all winter to collect eggs, check on frozen water, etc. So we had some help to move the coop to an area right outside the back door. It also was an area we wanted cleared of grass and weeds. They did that admirably and then we moved the coop to another place still in the back that we wanted weeded. Also we were not ready to put them out in the potager.

When they were out in the potager last summer, they were still little. Now they're full grown and I wanted to give them more room, hence the runs. I still am working out a few details on the fencing.

The coop is heavy and hard to move. So once I get it moved out to the potager, it'll stay there and we'll probably put in a second coop in the back for the winter. Our middle son will be home from college in two weeks and then we can find one more kid to help us move the coop out there.

I'm a little worried about the fencing because if they know you're working in the near vicinity, they really want to come and be near you and see what you're doing. They're very social. So I know they'll start trying to fly over the fence, so need to make sure they can't get over (or under). Here in the back of the house, they just go after weeds whenever they get loose. In the potager, there will be all kinds of tasty treats they love - lettuce, broccoli, etc. So I really need to make sure their area is secure and they have enough in there to keep them happy foraging.

In the long run, I think I'll only keep 2 or 3 of them back there in the summer and keep the rest on the back property. Then I'll move those 2 or 3 back here during the winter. Once I get the potager cleaned up and running, I don't feel there is enough room to sustain 7 hens. Esp when they have gotten use to having a much larger area. We'll see. We just play it by ear and keep trying to improve on things.

But yes, they are very fun to be outside with. Very social little things and really funny to watch.

Thanks for answering all my questions. Your potager design looks great.

Yes, I've thought it would be neat to keep some chickens; however, the idea was sadly vetoed by hubby. He used to care for his neighbors large coop after school and keeping chickens is not on his "fun things to do" list.

While it's a very lovely image of chickens wandering about the potager, not much would be left at the end of the day. They'll probably have to content themselves with weeds and trimmings from inside their run.

I have talked about wanting chickens for years and my hubby has always said no, no, no. Of course, that's not the reason I didn't get them! LOL I just wasn't ready and wasn't sure and all. I finally decided to take the plunge. I didn't even tell him they were coming! He just came home one night and they were here. Of course, I had been talking about it for 10 years, so I think he knew the day was coming sooner or later.

well, it turns out, he LOVES the chickens. Is out there with them all the time and takes better care of them than I do. (Altho I am the one who cleans out the coop.)

I can tell you they've come a very long way in coop design and most coops have a board that makes cleaning them out really easy. (Of course I didn't get this kind but my next one will definitely have it!) They are SO much fun and so easy to care for. I wish I had gotten them years ago.

Yes, I agree with you about the charming image of a chicken in a potager....until the end of the day, if the plants even lasted that long. One of the reasons I want them in a run around the potager perimeter is to eat all those weeds that grow up along a fence line and are so hard to pull. And also to eat the bad bugs that come anywhere near. They definitely will not be having free run of the potager! Plus I wouldn't want their poop on or near the plants - it wuld burn them, not to mention make them inedible.

Our second dog came home that way and dh really loves her now,but chickens are a different story.

Great thought about the weed and bug control. Here's a link for an article from Mother Earth News about a garden with a chicken moat around it. ...thought you might find it interesting.

Here is a link that might be useful: chicken moat

Very funny book by Novella Carpenter called "Farm City." She calls chickens the "gateway drug" to livestock.

Still can't have them in Boston, so it's not an option. Yet.

Gwen- Do you have any pictures of your potager? Did it work out the way you had planned? It seems no matter how much I plan, once I start laying things out, there are always a few changes :)

I don't have any pics! My camera is broken and has not been replaced or fixed. :( Also, at the end of last summer, we had drip irrigation installed. The potager was completely torn up from the trenching to install that. I am only slowly getting it put back together. It's so discouraging to have to do it all over again. I only got tomatoes, basil (completely covered by the toms and I can't even find them!), onions, and garlic planted this year. Plus herbs elsewhere and a few lettuces tucked into some flower planters. I'm hoping I can get it back under control next summer.

Gwenb- I'm sure you'll have all kinds of energy to attack the potager plan next spring, after a long winter's break. With all this hot weather, I got behind too, but now that it's finally cooled off, I'm trying to get things a bit more organized. I've decided that the kitchen garden will be perennials on three sides, with the potager at one end. That area will be for smaller, annual veggies and flowers. The larger vegetables will go in a new garden, on the other side of the house, that will have more of a farm theme. It should be pretty cute, with a scarecrow and everything :)

My 10 year-old nephew is helping me plan "our" new garden. It will probably have potatoes, corn, melons, tomatoes, squash and all the big things that sprawl too much to stay in the nice little confines of the potager space. LOL

I hope you get a new camera for Christmas, because I'm looking forward to all your progress next spring!

For now, planting bulbs sounds like a good idea, so I can have some nice color in March and April. I'm thinking about edging two sides of the kitchen garden with bulbs, under the forsythia on one side and the pontilia on the other. The other two sides are blueberries, with strawberries underneath. I decided to use shrubs instead of a fence to enclose the garden...and I really like the results :)

That sounds nice! How about making pyramid beds? You can stack add up to two layers higher than what they are and reach them much easier. Like the strawberry pyramids, I would love a bunch of those and would try to make one or two!

You can plant a small potted tree in the middle, like a Ginkgo, tea or coffee tree, or Sassafras. Good luck on your new and old beds!