How big is your pocket book?
I have a garden which is about 50 x 75 in our side yard. In the past I have used scraps of snow fencing, but this year my husband treated my to 4 foot high no-climb wire horse fence from Tractor Supply. One end is still snow fence, but I like this fence so much I think we will buy the missing piece for next year. Granted it is not architectural in any way, but with new T- posts it is neat and tidy and very effective. It took the neighbor and I a little over an hour to drive the posts and set the fence. It wasn't too much work, even for a "girl". I plan on removing it over the winter so we can take down a few trees. In the future I will probably just take down one end to get the tractor and rottotiller in.

We expanded the garden this year, so I wasn't sure where to put the gates. In the future, I will probably set 4 x 4 gate posts and put nice wooden gates in several places. The sweet corn is ripe, and so far no marauding racoons. But, if that happens I am prepared to go get a solar fencer and put a hot wire along the top.

I'm very happy with how tight and neat this fence is. It is effective against deer and rabbits. We have some woodchucks too, but none have tried to dig under. Right now it is holding up half of my pumpkin vines. I've had to support the pumpkins with sheeting. My husband calls them pumpkin diapers!

farmer,
thanks for the input.
I am thinking I want to go picket on the fence. It will be very close to the house and I made a deal with my wife to keep it very appealing.
I plan on building the fence myself. Money really isn't an issue unless it starts to get outrageous.
Thanks again,
Tom

Oregon,

Couple of other questions I would have you ask yourself:

how does the sun move? you will want lay your beds in a way that you can control a good mix of sun and shade

make a list of how you garden and build your beds so they can accomodate - extra deep beds for your root vegetables, space to put grapes, beds for cut flowers, beds for herbs/perrenials, holding beds, beds with built in hoop covers, etc

think about path material - gravel is pretty but not if you don't have time to weed it, rock can get slippery if you get a lot of rain, etc.

think about bed width - most people keep beds to 3 to 4 feet for their back sake.

make sure you include a spot or two to sit and think

hope that helps!

If you are thinking about picket fence (I love the ones that dip between the posts for a nice scalloped effect) then I would plan on putting wire along the bottom to keep the critters from squeezing under. I think that pickets would be preferable over stockade style because at the worst you would get filtered sunlight, not complete shade against the fence. Many things do well in filtered light and you can put those things against the south fence. Plan some cold frames up against the north fence. Then add nice arbors over the gates for vines.
Either Country Home or Country Living magazine had a nice specialty issue on garden structures this summer. Maybe you can find it at a news stand.
I would also make it so at least one section of the fence was easily removeable so you can get in there with a garden tractor if necessary. That is what has put me off planning "real" pottager. I just love my giant rottotiller, and can't imagine life without it!

manzomecorvus,
I have kinda laid out the bed orientation.
Light lovers will go in south beds (except up against the fence as farmer mentioned because the fence will shade it), I figured my sunflowers in center beds providing shade for north side shade lovers.
Good thinking about path material. I would not like to weed at all if possible. Would it be feasible to lay down landscape fabric. It probably wouldn't cost more than a couple hundred bucks right to cover the whole thing?
I think if I laid gravel over the fabric, that should control weeds?
Farmer, I really would like an arbor, I'll try to check out that magazine. A sitting Arbor would be nice also.
My 10x12 greenhouse is on the NW corner of the lot so I don't really need cold frames.
I think I want the gates large enough for my tractor to go in. I don't have a tiller because all of my growing is done in raised beds. I do want a garden shed on the NE side. Just for tools and stuff.
Must everything I grow is edible, so what kind of vines would be good on the gates? Grapes?. The gates will be on the West & East sides.
I plan on drawing this out soon. I want to start building first week in Oct. I really appreciate all the help. Any more suggestions will be great.
Thanks,
Tom

I think grapevines on the gates would be an excellent idea. My mother has a huge Concord grapevine from us spitting seeds off the porch when we were kids. Now she realizes she will have to build a pergola off the end of the house to support it. It has just about taken over the front porch. There are also many wonderful varieties of pole beans to experiment with.
I am not a big fan of landscape fabric in any event. Since I rottotill, I always lean toward organic material such as straw or mulch, but that gets expensive, not to mention labor intensive, year after year. I think pea gravel between raised beds would do well. A friend just put that down (after slipping in the mud and pulling a hamstring). You would have to have quite a layer over landscape fabric to keep it from rolling around. You might try layers of newspaper instead.
Lucky you to have a greenhouse! I'm envious. A tool shed would be great. We keep moving ours around all over the property (and yes they are large and a hassle to move). When this garden thing gets figured out permanently, my large shed/chicken coop will go right along the fence with a gate beside for easy access to both shed and garden.
I've always wanted to put a park bench in the middle of mine so I can sit and enjoy it. I think one of those fancy octagon benches designed to go around trees would be just the ticket. You could put a nice obelisk shaped trellis or a bird bath in the middle and enjoy your garden from all angles.

Tom, I have a potager with gravel over landscape fabric and it doesn't take long for the weeds to start popping up. You have to really keep on top of it. Right now I'm slowly putting down 18"x18" stepping stones in the gravel paths just to cut down on the weeding. If you do a search here, you should find my photos of my potager and the design plan. I did a 5-foot post and rail fence backed with wire. That seems to keep the deer out. Potager is 40'x40'.

I'm also a begginer in the potteger stuff.
We have been using old carpet with gravel over it as a cost saver cause we have over an acre to tackle.
We do have to weed or Roundup in the spring. The leaves settle and the weed seeds settle.
Our pottager area is about 25" X50" or so. we have 1 8x8' raised bed and 2 4x8' beds ready to go as soon as we hire some 20 somethings!
Also a small 6x8 green house and tool shed.
I'm planning to plant some grapes in barrels to cut down on the horse dust from next door.
And on I go! Nancy

Nancy, are you taking lots of pics?
I think it would be neat if more people took pictures as they progressed. That way others will benefit.
I have some pics so far, and when work begins in Oct, I plan on taking more along the way. I'm going to post them on the web because I know there will be lots of mistakes along the way that need to be fixed and hopefully others can learn too.
There are lots of educated people here, so I am going to try and minimize the mistakes.
Keep us posted on your progress.
Tom

Tom, I don't know how to post pics on this board or ANYWHERE!
If I ever figure that out, I'll be the first one here! LOL

first you need to load your photos on a photo website. I use Photobucket.com Then there are links that you can past in. It is pretty easy once you get set up. I posted photos on the vegetable gardening forum, and it only took a couple minutes of trial and error. There are 4 types of links associated with each photo. I forget which type worked here, and I can't get on to Photobucket from work, but if I remember when I get home, I'll check which type works.

OK, if you upload your photos to photobucket.com, click on the HTML tag and paste it into the message. Here is one of my six "potager" squares which reside in the large expanse of my row style garden.
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And here is my recent tomato/eggplant harvest.
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We used a vinyl scalloped picket fence, and just as farmer_at_heart said, I had to run chicken wire along the base of the picket fence to keep out the bunnies. I cut a 2' high roll of 2" mesh chicken wire lengthwise to make long strips 1 foot high. This seems to be high enough to keep out the rabbits. Most of the time I don't even notice it's there.

The vinyl fence is OK, but in retrospect I wish we had done something more natural looking. I guess it looks fine from a distance, but whenever I get up close to it, it looks like plastic to me. On the flip side, it never needs to be painted and is arguably the easiest of all fences to install. This is mainly because the brackets can be mounted anywhere on the post. So if you can get the post down 3 feet in the ground, then great - mount the brackets and drop the panel in place. If you can only get the post down 2 feet, then no big deal, just mount the brackets at that height and it will be fine. We have a lot of ledge around us, and 2 of my posts are only a few inches deep. This wasn't a problem really because I just dug out around the ledge as best I could, then poured a bag of concrete in the hole, then set the post and poured a little more concrete inside the hollow post. Once it dried, it was very stable, as the posts are now permanently bonded to the ledge. I just screwed in the brackets at the appropriate height and lopped off the top of the post.

Point being, vinyl is very easy to work with.

-Diggity