Donna- What a great question! I was just thinking about this, when trying to decide how to fence my potager. We live on an old farm that is mostly horse pasture and fields today. We have a creek behind the house with aspens and behind it a hill with pine trees. I try to keep the garden a bit more on the natural side to blend in with the surroundings :)

After all my debate about fencing, I ended up not fencing at all, but using shrubs to "enclose" the garden to have it blend more wtih the rest of the yard. I used lilacs in the back corners of my fairy garden, with blueberries along the back, so I'm using lilacs on the four corners of my potager with blueberries along two sides. The third side will probably be wild roses (free along the fence lines) and forsythias along the front. I can keep the forsythias pruned a bit if necessary, but they'll make a great windbreak and gorgeous color in the spring.

Forsythias were not my original choice (I was thinking of using spirea) but when I found them for less than $3 each, forsythia seemed like the perfect choice! LOL

Here's a view of our potager from the back. I think it's a mixture of both scenarios. It stands on its own, but the line of trees on either side help to soften and blend. The trees are uplighted. It's a detail that we love, and one that was not our idea.

lulabelle- Wonderful. Thanks for posting the back view of your garden. It is situated so well with your house and property.

Speaking of defining boundaries with shrubs and plants instead of fencing, does anyone find that method a problem when it comes to shading? I love the idea of putting natural borders to define beds and/or keep out critters, but I've always worried about casting shadows and taking away sunlight from my veggies and flowers! Thoughts?

My potager will have a somewhat more formal feel than much of our other landscaping. On the western side, we have planted 6 blue point Junipers. These have a conical shape to give the garden more structure and will also eventually provide a wind break. The appearance of these will eventually be softened by a flower bed in front of them. The arbor is also on this side which is a formal element but it will be softened by climbers. I am not overly concerned about the shade these will cast as they are on the west and because the sun here is intense enough that the plants will welcome a break.

The potager will eventually be connected by other landscaping I hope to do but I also wanted it set apart somewhat as it is my sanctuary. The arbor gives the feeling of transitioning from the greater landscape into a smaller, more intimate space where I can seek my much needed repose (which is why the kids vegetable gardening will be done elsewhere).

I agree with tishtoshnm, the veggies can use a break from all that hot sun in the summer. I usually have trouble finding enough shade for cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, etc. With our short summers, everything has to grow together, no spring/summer/fall planting :)

The blueberries will stay fairly short (3-4 feet) but the forsythias on the west side will get taller, providing shade and a break from the wind. The potager is more my fancy garden with lots of flowers, fruit and smaller veggies, mixed with flowers and lots of alyssum throughout.

I have another garden planned too (next year's project) which we are calling the "farm" garden, very rustic with a scarecrow, gourds, sprawling pumpkins, corn, potatoes, lots of melons and everything mulched with hay, not alyssum. (LOL)

Of course, the nieces and nephews love the idea of both gardens, depending on what's being planted or harvested at the time.

I am very concerned about casting shade with other plantings. That's one reason I am not putting an arbor at the entrance. I think I'll see how it all plays out this summer and consider adding one next year.

I do think about connecting the potager to its surroundings and making it make sense from a cohesive design standpoint. Right now, my potager is this very over-designed and intensely-gardened quadrant of my small backyard with not much else going on in the yard beyond some basic stuff on the perimeter.

My gardening focus this year is my backyard, and I started with the potager because I wanted to complete it in time to get some summer veggies planted. Now that I've done that, I plan a couple of other garden "rooms." One will be an adjacent shade garden with a swing or bench under a preexisting flowering dogwood as a focal point. Another will be a little dining grotto. I am sort of letting it develop as it feels comfortable to me. I also dug stepping stones into my grass connecting the potager to my back door. I think that has helped a bit. It also lets me dash out the back door in my bare feet to get herbs as I'm cooking. LOL.

Hope I'm making sense! I love talking about this stuff here on this forum. Normally these thoughts just tumble around all alone in my head!

Lisa

Great ideas, lisa. Keep them coming. I actually started a garden journal to keep track of all the ideas that I come up with and a running to do list. It's very satisfying to check things off as they get done.

As for border plantings, I only have a front border and its shade doesn't reach the raised beds. Although I decided not to add an entrance trellis to the hop yard since I felt it would shade the blueberries and herbs too much. Below is the hop yard photographed from the back. It's just about done. You can see the front border to the right.

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oops. You can see the front border to the left, not right. To the right is my lovely pile of mulch bags and leftover wood scraps.

I love the arbors, in a row. It adds so much architectural interest to your garden, and with the beautiful scenery in the background it is perfect!

Great work! You are so going to enjoy it. Do you have a seat nearby to sit and take it all in? :)

Thanks! Yes, I have a seating area that's a bit in disarray. It's just in front of the outside border to the left of the arbors. To the left, under the tree, I have a concrete bench (which also covers a large rock so I won't hit it with the mower again. hehe)

I think there are several ways that you can blend your potager into your landscape. First, and obviously, choose hardscaping materials that echo or blend what has been used in the home's construction. The block I used in my potager beds has the same color as the brick in my house. The arbor and bench are the same color as the house trim. I am using a good bit of boxwood to define the shape of the potager, and have used boxwood in other parts of the yard as well.

As far as fencing, shade, etc. From a critter point of view, fencing is the ideal. You need 8 to 10 feet of fence to keep deer out. I have seen the rabbits in my yard jump at least six feet in the air, so the 8 to 10 foot rule may apply to them as well.

My problem is my potager is on a hillside between a curving sidewalk and a curving dry stream. It simply doesn't lend itself to a straight lined fence. For the time being, I have electrical deterents in my beds, and they seem to be mostly working.

I thought alot about the shade issue. I already have high woods along the southwest side of my potager. They cast shade during the very hottest part of the day, though, so I think that is a plus. On the eastern side I will be careful to keep my boxwood "fence" no higher than waist high so that they won't shade out the first row of beds. The west end of the bed is a row of ornamental grasses and I chose a low growing variety for that. It is always a good idea to choose plants that will be low enough when they are full grown, as opposed to having to do constant pruning to keep them in bounds later on. I enclose a link to some pictures of my potager, which is still in its infancy.

Anyone want to share how to get pictures from your storage site to these forums? I assume you need a "box" here, but don't know how to do that....:)

Here is a link that might be useful: Second spring in my potager

Donna, once you have your pic on the storage site, bring it up, copy the address, and put it in place of "your URL" in the HTML below. Then just type the whole thing in this space right here (where you are typing your message).
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Be sure and place spaces where they are shown and none where they are not. Except NO spaces in the URL.
Tammy

Okay, I went to a picture, pulled it up and copied the url for it. Then I pasted it into the Optional Link URL below. Then I copied and pasted it into the message space here, but no image appeared. What did I do wrong? (THANKS for your help.)

When posting a pic, copy the image location. Then in the body of the message put

img src="paste image location here"

Put the above inside these things, , just like tammyinva shows. When you preview the message it should appear. You don't need to use the optional link box at all. The photo should be embedded.

Testing

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Ali-b, when I clicked "view page source", it looked like you forgot the quotation marks around the URL. I went to your pic form this source, and then right clicked on your pic, then left clicked on " copy image URL", then pasted that address into the URL spot in the diagram I gave you below. So it should look like this without the extra spaces:

Shading is something I worry about, too. My potager is so new that it looks like raw cedar poles with open black wire fencing nailed to it. The tomatoes are inside the fencing but along the south side and get plenty of sun. However, when the climbing roses get going (2-3 years from now, as I've read) on all the poles, all the side areas will have shade. At that time the tomatoes will go in the middle bed where the sun hits all day. I hope.

Carol

Wow. Thanks, tammy! Maybe I did not choose the best photo for this forum, but I am glad to see how to do it now. :)