Kitchen Garden Ideas

Whether you have a larger backyard garden space or just a little corner of the patio, don't be afraid to make your garden work for you as a kitchen garden. Select some herbs and edible flowers for planting and you'll have something nice to smell and taste, as well as admire with your eyes.

This cottage garden combines plants of all types -- including edible varieties -- to create a kitchen garden.

Historically, many cottage gardens combined all types of garden plants together: annuals, perennials, bulbs, trees, shrubs, herbs, and even fruits and vegetables. Taking a leaf or two from this tradition, modern gardeners can practice companion planting -- combining disparate sorts of plants that grow well together -- and make even the working parts of gardens beautiful as well as useful. This excellent example of a kitchen garden arranges its vegetables in neat geometric beds with growing frames, while shrubs, vines, and a large trellis provide aesthetic accents.

Cottage gardens make the most of small spaces, so this container herb garden is perfect, and complemented by nearby vines.

Useful gardening is possible even in the smallest of spaces. Here, an herb garden in miniature flourishes delightfully in a terra-cotta strawberry pot, providing fresh chives, mint, and parsley as condiments for the table. The nasturtium and the rambunctious vines of perennial pea growing at right repeat the abundance of the herb pot on a larger scale, while the lavender pea flowers match the color of the chive blossoms.

Whether an assortment of colors, a spot of shade, or a source for bouquets and seasonings is your goal, one of these cottage garden ideas is sure to help you along -- especially if you don't have too much space. Happy planting!

A cottage garden is just one way to go with your digging and planting, for more gorgeous garden ideas, try one of these: