Kitchen Garden Designs

It’s a mid-summer ritual for kitchen gardeners, bringing the canning kettles up from the basement, and a sure sign that the harvest season has begun. At first, it’s a little like remembering how to drive a car in winter, but then gets easier with each batch of pickles, dilly beans and ginger peach chutney. I […]

Kitchen Garden Design My first kitchen garden design,  began with the four square system, which is one of the oldest and most practical methods that goes back seven centuries. The design has evolved through the ages, and in its best form, combines classic design with the principles of organic gardening. A four square garden simplifies […]

YEAR ROUND GARDEN DESIGN.  I designed my current kitchen garden in 2004, as part of a five year plan when I moved into my new (1905) house. At the time, it was perfect: a simple four-square design with a bark path. Yet lately I have been thinking about how to rebuild it to give it […]

There is a big difference between a practical tool shed, and a tiny garden house, yet either way a little cottage designed within the garden gate invites whimsy and imagination to flow. Like a good pantry, a garden shed should be large enough to contain everything you need, easily accessible, and organized enough so you […]

Driving to Montreal for New Years, the long flat stretches just after the Vermont border were unexpected after leaving the mountains.  Endless long white fields of snow with swirling clouds as a dramatic backdrop and it seemed that the curvature of the earth was visible against the horizon.  In the city, we parked the car […]

Sometimes the beauty in our gardens is not really about the design, but the glorious ways that nature grows all on its own to form a partnership. When I first began to garden, it was all about the flowers. In fact, for the next twenty years it continued to be all about the flowers. I […]

This time of year, it’s hard to decide whether to eat the harvest or simply arrange it in a basket to admire the natural beauty of home grown food. Instead of writing about food, I thought I would simply share my favorite photos taken by Ali Kaukas for my book, The Complete Kitchen Garden. These […]

A natural rustic trellis is one of most beautiful ways to enhance and create a portal into the garden, and while the final result may look natural, it is not as easy to build as it may look. It takes measuring, a bit of skill and good tools, and a whole lot of creativity. It […]

First stop on last weekends garden tour was to meet a friend at White Flower Farm in Litchfield County, CT. We had plans to tour as many garden as possible, on the Garden Conservancy open days tours. Before we visited the magnificent borders, we were immediately drawn to a collection of rustic looking pottery on […]

“Always keep something beautiful in your mind” — Pascal Gardens produce memories, and what I place in my garden is usually sentimental as well as beautiful. Whether you are following the latest European garden trends to discover just the right blue-green color to paint the patio furniture, or the latest on ceramic fairy houses, garden […]