It would be a garden where vegetables and fruits and flowers all dance together in perfect harmony, where practicality waltzed in step with beauty. That, my friends, is what they call potager. Just the concept is as delightfully French as a croissant with your morning coffee. This is considerably less intimidating than some of their linguistic combinations: the potager garden.
Imagine yourself taking a leisurely walk through an area where the heads of lettuce sidle up beside the roses and fragrant herbs raise eyebrows with sun-kissed strawberries. It is not just to feed the stomach, really; rather, it is feasting the eyes, period. Just planting one lonely tomato plant among the petunias and calling it good wasn’t going to cut the mustard; it had to be far more artistic than that. The potager: this, metaphorically speaking, is where it’s all happening regarding trowel work.
Take my Aunt Sally, for example; it was vegetables ordered on her doorsteps, not some neighbors’ Instagram. The front was blank canvas, the peas and marigolds stood as intimate friends; the beans wrap themselves on corn stalks, like old buddies on a bar crawl, while Sally tucks colorful violas in between parsley patches to give her garden that playful color burst.
The potager does not have to be this stiff, four-seasonal parade to the beat of a single drummer. Yours can shimmy and shake, fashion-forward Parisian down some runway or another. Spring brings in the treasures from the local seed shop: crisp radishes and spritty snap peas ready to go. In come the lettuces with summer, like an early morning fog, beside fat cherry tomatoes. Because it is just pointless to pull them into some kind of corset of these strict rows. Let vegetables socialize.
This is not a book about indolent summer days lounging around on a hammock and dangling a toe or two in the shallow pool of horticulture. The potager is for the somewhat more adventurous spirit-daredevil-ready to plunge into dirt head-first, with both hands.
Obviously, one doesn’t have to be born with green thumbs or born of farmers; they should just be very much excited over the aesthetics and the bread.
There are a few nuggets of wisdom I’d share for this merry garden endeavor. First, think about what your taste buds crave. No point in growing kohlrabi if Grandpa’s the only one who knows what to do with it. Trust me, your family will thank you, especially if they’re on the receiving end of endless kohlrabi casseroles.
Of course, there is interplanting-your ultimate key. Mix and match just as on a spice rack in the kitchen to make the plants complementary to one another. As much as some plants do guard duties protecting the others against pests, some give shade canopies for the sun-sensitive friends.
Not afraid to mix color, texture, and heights, this tiny bit of chaos conducted just like a maestro does it-the display is absolute heaven. Now, see these plant companions-they are the best dinner guests because they balance each other out so there won’t be any awkward silences, or, in this case, diseases and pests.
But then, one may ask, does such duality of beauty and service require some sort of Herculean battle plan. Actually, more often, it is just that little irresistible nudge here, a little juggling there. Listen to your garden as if the ground whispered secrets of the earth to you. Pitiful is the gardener who hardens his ears!
One garden that allows for endless experimentation is the potager: what works today needs to be readjusted tomorrow. And of course, the reward most definitely abounds. There’s much to be said for the satisfaction of reaching out and to be able to pick that luscious tomato or fragrant lavender and having created this living picture.
This form of gardening thus applies to either small plots or defiant ones perched on city roofs. Whichever the case may be, with the usage of pots, raised beds, even trellises, scarcity of space remains a problem for which one can find answers with panache. No plot can be too small where imagination plays its due role.
But Aunt Sally insists that the most glamorous ribbon on this tale is the tête-à-tête such a potager provides: a friend, perhaps enticed by the scent of basil on the breeze, strolls over, and the talk drifts to the latest new variety of bean, which is prospering as it would be on the grapevine.
So strap on the dancing shoes-better yet, the gardening gloves-and dance outside with abandon. Dance with nature’s whims, taking the potager garden as your partner in this deft pas de deux. Your table, your senses, and most of all, your spirit will thank you.
As inimitable Aunt Sally would say, it’s in community that a potager can pull its full charm-not just in produce it pulls in, but in the connections it nurtures. The family and friends get pulled into this big story; they smell and touch the herbs, listen to the humming of the bees. It actually is a place for congregation, a scene to narrate and share tales and guffaws.
Not to talk about the learning aspect at all, for kids with curiosity in their veins, this would be a living book. They get to learn how the life cycle of the plants goes, where their food comes from, and they get themselves to pull out a fresh carrot to taste. This is life as a class; here, along with the seeds, lessons, too, are sown.
An ornamental vegetable garden-what the French call a potager-is undeniably a continuing education. Various problems and rewards are developed with each season. Sometimes highly unpredictable weather is experienced while at other times the pests attack in an unobtrusive manner. Sometimes what has been thriving the previous year becomes finicky. It is there, however, one gets the chance to learn and adjust and expand much as the plants do.
But from such a concordant garden, the question might well be asked if it ever does need relentless care. Devotion it does indeed need, but such labor is way more often tinged by joy rather than by drudgery. Rich rewards come from hands-on contact with the earth, the satisfaction of watching a seedling thrive, and the celebration of reaping your kaleidoscope of crops. To that thumbs-green project, let me remind whoever embarks on it that a potager garden speaks volumes of its person. Let the fingers create upon the soil. Where needed, start with the little ones; a couple of containers will create your miniature Eden. Enjoy it in the process-the sudden spurts of growth, the blossoming flowers-telling tales of one’s toil and love.
And yet finally, the potager is ruled neither by practical nor by pretty-but revels in both: this is where function kisses beauty, where a work of living art inspires the spirit while nourishing the body. Take a cue from Aunt Sally and her crazy patchwork of peas and flowers: plant with passion; harvest with heart. From this unity, a greatly increased living in the ordinary life emerges: life serves not only the needs but brings joy, friendship, and unlimited inspiration.
