American Potager

it's not rocket science

What's growing in the garden is served at the table. This is the simplest description of living from the potager jardin. So the 'garden dictates the menu' recipe for today is Fresh Tomatillo Salsa. The recipe is in the first picture; that's it- tomatillos, a tomato, purple peppers and jalapeños. Well almost, I also added some salt, fresh cilantro and lime juice until it suited me. Served with blue tortilla chips it was gone within minutes. 

  

designing a formal potager

     My client loves the English garden and her husband loves the formal French garden. They enjoy cooking and entertaining friends and family and wanted a formal space to grow an abundance of herbs, flowers and vegetables to eat and to generously give away. They also wanted the garden to look beautiful all year with lines to complement the colonial brick house. This is the initial sketch that brings together their desires. In all of my designs, I supply an extensive, detailed planting plan. The master plan leaves room for the annual vegetables and flowers that will be rotated yearly and provides as much space as possible for perennials that attract beneficial insects and supply the garden and the table with colorful blooms all season long.

why american potager?

    I don't live in a chateau, have a grand estate or even a gardener. My husband is mildly, at best, interested in gardening. My children are now living throughout the country engaged in various creative endeavors - and honestly, they only shared my zeal for weeding, mulching and squishing horned tomato worms when I paid them. I want to borrow the philosophy and beauty of the French potager- living connected to the garden and the seasons and am determined to create this paradise where I live- on my own Midwest clay soil in my own suburban neighborhood. This blog will be a personal dialog of my own workshop garden. I may periodically throw in design theory and philosophy and images and designs for clients gardens. My practice is reality gardening. This is the new kitchen garden - returning to a simple grow your own dinner lifestyle and doing it where you live. american + potager

what is a potager?

   

    The jardin potager is the French kitchen garden. Potager literally means "for the soup pot" in French and carries with it a philosophy of living with the seasons. So the soup pot changes throughout the year. In the spring radishes, mustards and peonies for the table. The hot summer is time for tomatoes, peppers and basil with daisies in the vase; as the days shorten and cool the flavors get deeper and richer as we harvest pumpkins, Brussell's sprouts and kale. The potager, as the French have known for centuries, is a designed useful and beautiful garden where we grow edible and non-edible flowers, herbs, fruit and vegetables. I have photographed some of the most beautiful potagers in the world in my book Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An American Potager Handbook published by Timber Press.