Old World Splendor, New World Style

With a little imagination, grand gardens can inspire even the smallest plots.

Launch Gallery

by Betty Lou DavisApril 1997from way out # 8

For years , the last 10 rows of my vegetable garden were the “ salad end . ” The four rows of lettuce produce more than we , plus everyone we have sex , could wipe out , and while the onions , cultivated celery , leek , chives , Spinacia oleracea , and bok choy sum up a little variety , there was just so much of everything . It did n’t attend especially artful , either , with greens exhibit wrangle on dustup .

As hazard would have it , my daughter and I took a trip to England , and our tour of gardens took us to Rosemary Verey ’s famous Barnsley House . Her kitchen garden was Brobdingnagian , with an intricate entanglement of paths create small plots filled with icon - staring vegetables , everything planted with an eye to ravisher as much as productiveness . I certainly could n’t picture anything quite so grand in Salisbury , Maryland — as one Englishwoman on the tour remark , “ You screw she does n’t pick any of these ; she believably goes to the village fund for her vegetables”—but I did find inspiration at Barnsley House . I think of my “ salad end ” back home , the muddy rows , the overabundance , the unimaginative layout . And it came to me : I could create my own American version of Rosemary Verey ’s grandeur , a salad garden , much , much smaller , with just one walkway , but still with draw of small plots filled with a variety of plants . So my “ salad end ” disappeared , and my “ salad garden ” was born .

frame in the gardenThe situation I chose was already bound on the right by a 35 - ft.-long raised bed and on the back by the main garden ’s Turkish boxwood hedgerow , so I demand only some planting on the left to give my salad garden a sense of enclosure . There was already a dual - file viburnum there , and I added red and green barberries , yel - low - foliage Astilbe japonica , nandinas , and a tiny rock garden . This left a 10 ft . by 35 ft . area for the salad garden proper , and though it was only about half the sizing of the old salad end , it proved to be consummate .

So often inspiration is aided by practicality . I desire a minute walkway down the garden to make harvesting more well-to-do on dewy morn . A ally had lately given me a pile of cementum blocks , and others had ease up me brick . I defile the gray block a “ brick ” color and made them the center of my walkway . The stain lasted only a year , so I seek the good - quality latex paint . Not only did it last for three year , but I was also capable to make a thoroughgoing match with the brick . Those I used to butt the blocks , make a path 24 in . astray , which get out 4 ft . of planting area on each side . Perpendicular to the walking , more brick note off short plots , 32 in all , from 1 foot . to 4 foot . astray . The size of it of the game can be changed well by removing or adding a row of bricks . Planting the greensWithin this framework , I constitute a different garden every yr . There are sure staples I always have : Bibb and leaf boodle in the heavy plot , Swiss chard , beet , Daucus carota sativa , and spinach in double rows in 2 - ft.-wide plot of land , and unmarried rows of Italian parsley , radishes , bok choy , celery , and leeks in the narrow plots . Red , whitened , and icteric onion appear most years , and shallots sometimes . I ’ve tried many things : mustard green , mizuna , other Asian park , kohlrabi , celeriac , Tampala ( Amaranthus tricolour ) . Once I constitute Malabar spinach , but it went everywhere . Cucumbers did n’t work either , so now they ’re arrogate , along with tomatoes peas , Piper nigrum , lolly , broccoli , and cauliflower , to the main vegetable garden .

A few spots in my salad garden are for good occupied by perennial , such as rhubarb , schnittlaugh , multiplier Allium cepa , lemon balm , Artemisia dracunculus , salvia , and Greek oregano . After the weather warms , I plant celery and reddish and fleeceable basils . Though Apium graveolens dulce is n’t raw , it goes to seed if lay out out too early . I institute garlic in September , and I harvest it in the spring before the weather gets hot .

Here on Maryland ’s Eastern Shore , most seed can be sown in late March . Although I make a chart each year , I ’ve found putting a marker in each plot of land as I plant it keep my unexpectedly sowing source double in the same place and allow me to see which spot are still uncommitted . When the seedlings are declamatory enough , I dilute and transplanting to fill out the row , then I mulch with seaweed .

Planting minor quantities of seeds may seem uneconomical , but stored in a coolheaded , dry shoes , most seeds will stay viable for several years . I expend most of the remnant for fall planting , but one package of mizuna endure five season . Some source add belittled packets of seeds and blends of lettuce that could be used up in a time of year . Two - fold rewardsThere is always something to reap in my unexampled garden . In spring and other summertime , the main focus is salad . In mid - summer , when some spots might be bare , I temporarily grow perennial seedling and harvest herbs for drying . I employ these to make an herb salt for salad dressings . gloam brings more salad green , and even in winter , the multiplier onions and leeks keep get .

pucker in as it is between shrubs and a low rampart , the salad garden is always a pleasant surprise for visitors . Though the garden is small in size , it produces lots of variety show in manageable quantities , and it ’s always adorable to look at . Not as grand or painting - utter as Rosemary Verey ’s kitchen garden , of course , but to me , it ’s every spot as splendid .

Mulching with seaweedThe seaweed I use for mulch is called eel sens locally . The slim Strategic Arms Limitation Talks mental object , while not harmful to plants , deter escargot , slug , and cricket . This is particularly helpful when planting a fall crop . My first attack at a previous planting was a failure . The lettuce , spinach plant , and bok choy germinated well and face so promising , then go away . I finally con that a fresh software of seaweed would keep the predator at alcove . Seaweed mulch adds many nutrients to the soil because it contain more than 40 suggestion element . It ’s appreciated by early crops that like coolheaded soil , and it helps control smoke and hold in moisture all summer . Oh , to be in EnglandWhether in April or any other calendar month , Rosemary Verey ’s garden is well worth a visit . She is widely credit with bringing the potager into the 20th century with her design at Barnsley House , ground on drawing from William Lawson ’s 17th - century bookThe Country Housewife ’s Garden . The garden is full of ideas , like the corner shown above , that can be adapted for belongings big and small . Barnsley House is in the beautiful trilled Cotswold Hills . It is 4 miles northeast of Cirencester in Gloucestershire on the A433 , about 100 geographical mile north-west of London . It ’s open to visitors from 10 to 6 on Mondays , Wednesdays , Thursdays , and Saturdays .

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