Transform your backyard into a beautiful, functional kitchen garden inspired by French potagers. Learn 8 essential elements to create a potager garden that feeds both body and soul.
Have you ever visited a vegetable garden that you never wanted to leave?
In my corner of suburban Midwest America, we seem to be stuck creating soulless yards consisting of a boring front hedge, a single tree, and a lot of grass.
If the homeowners have a vegetable garden, it’s typically hidden away at the back of the lot, full of weeds and tumbling tomato cages.
Definitely not a space I can feel inspired by or want to come back to.
Surely there’s a better way to grow food!
When I first started gardening, I felt overwhelmed by the beautiful pictures of mature gardens cultivated and expertly designed over years and years.
How could I ever hope to achieve something like this? Where do I start?
Have you felt the same way?
It wasn’t until after I had read several books on garden design and looked through hundreds of photos of dreamy potager gardens that I figured out what my own space was missing and how I could begin to transform it into a garden that I could and do fall in love with every year.
Together, I want us to look at the elements of a well-designed potager garden that are essential to create a kitchen garden that looks amazing.
If you’ve been wanting to design a brand-new garden on your own or revamp your current kitchen garden into one that you love to see, this is the post for you.
What Is a Potager Garden?
The kitchen garden satisfies both requirements, a thing of beauty and a joy for dinner.
— Peter Mayle
A potager garden is an ornamental and practical kitchen garden containing a mix of vegetables, fruits, flowers, and herbs in either an informal or formal style.
I love the potager style of kitchen gardens, and I even argue that a potager is the only kind of vegetable garden you need! Read about it here.
Traditional potager (poh-tah-zhay) gardens can be very formal and ornate with complicated layouts, tightly clipped hedges, ornamental statues, and magnificent fountains.
These types of ornamental kitchen gardens are very high-maintenance and decorative.
You might be able to maintain a garden like this if you have a team of gardeners to help you, or if you happen to have unlimited time and energy to work with!
For the rest of us normal people, we can take the main elements of a potager garden and transfer that to our own gardens to create a more maintainable version that matches the style and vibe of elaborate potagers.
8 Elements to Include in Your Potager Garden
A well-designed potager garden is one that you long to linger in and just can’t seem to pull yourself away from.
These 8 elements are must-haves in your potager garden if you want to create a space that you can’t wait to be in every single day.
There’s a reason why people pay to tour ornate potager gardens, and I think that if you incorporate these elements in your own garden, you could probably charge people to come visit your garden, too!
(OK, not really, but dreamers can dream, right?)
- Make It Functional
- Create Rhythm
- Use a Focal Point
- Add Vertical Interest
- Define Boundaries
- Pick Pretty Plants
- Stick to a Color Palette
- Install Pathways
Are you ready to make your potager garden dreams come true? (Except for the charging people part.)
Let’s go!
Make It Functional
Let’s talk about this element first because if your garden is not functional, there’s a very high chance you won’t want to get out there and take care of it or use it.
If it’s hard to get to your plants to tend them, or if it’s hard to keep plants watered because the hose is so far away (speaking for myself here), I’m not going to go out there in 90°F weather and take care of it.
As much as I love to garden and tend my plants, I’m really just a lazy gardener at heart and any small hindrance to getting a task completed could be the thing that gets me to throw in the towel.
The key to good design is functionality.
Does your garden work for you? Can you take care of it easily? Can you harvest from it easily?
If you can’t easily work in your garden because it’s not functional, scrap your design and start over.
I know that sounds harsh, but it’s what you have to do!
Create Rhythm
That’s right, rhythm isn’t just for musicians; gardeners need to create rhythm, too.
Rhythm in the garden is simply some form of repetition, symmetry, or pattern.
You might repeat certain plants in regular intervals along a border, or repeat the same shades of color throughout the garden.
Maybe you have a certain flower pot that you love, so you buy several of the same kind of pot and place them in the corners of your potager.
Create rhythm and repetition in whatever makes sense for your space.
You can also establish rhythm with where you place your raised beds.
I have six identical wooden raised beds in my kitchen garden that are spaced four feet apart from one another. It’s a very simple pattern, but having this structure creates rhythm and repetition that echoes the formality of elaborate French potager gardens even though my beds aren’t fancy at all!
Use a Focal Point
Your potager garden should also have a focal point.
The eye likes to see order in the chaos.
When a garden is full-grown, it can look overwhelming as plants start to grow into one another and boundaries are blurred.
Creating a focal point stops the eye from roaming confusedly over the chaotic mess and anchors it.
You can use just about anything as a focal point:
- a bird bath,
- a beautiful garden bench,
- a tall trellis,
- an ornate planter or flower pot,
- a sculptural plant,
- a sculptural sculpture… (haha)
Just pick a focal piece you like to look at.
Next, you must decide on a spot to put your focal piece.
The easiest place to put a focal piece in a kitchen garden is in the center of the garden.
Surrounded by lush plant-filled beds, the center of the garden is a natural place for the eye (and the gardener) to rest.
Some other good spots for a focal point are:
- under an archway
- centered against a wall or fence
- at the end of a pathway
- in the middle of converging pathways
Whatever focal point you create, just make it big enough to stand out from the crowd of plants and locate it where your eye naturally wants or needs to stop.
Add Vertical Interest
Great gardens incorporate vertical interest. Most gardeners find it easy to fill the horizontal space of the garden, but neglect the vertical space.
Adding height in the garden makes it instantly more dynamic and interesting. This is also one of the quickest ways to revamp your garden and give it a different feel.
There are several ways to add vertical interest in a potager garden.
- Plant a tree.
- Grow vining plants on a trellis.
- Use tall plant supports like an obelisk or teepee.
- Incorporate a pergola to rest under.
- Connect garden beds with an archway.
Bonus points if you can add vertical interest rhythmically by repeating the vertical element at intervals throughout your garden.
In my own potager garden, I connected my six raised beds with an arch trellis over the central path. This year, I’m also adding four tall obelisk trellises to the in-ground garden just behind the raised beds. I can’t wait to see how they look when all the plants have grown in!
Define Boundaries
Defining boundaries and creating a sense of enclosure in a kitchen garden is so important.
I didn’t realize for a long time how important it was to have clear, defined boundaries in a garden. I just kept feeling like my garden wasn’t quite right and something was missing until we edged our garden and created solid borders around the different areas of our backyard.
Someday we’d like to install a fence or hedge on the west border of the garden, but for now I typically grow a hedge of tall sunflowers along the edge of the garden that serves as a boundary line.
Last year, I planted sedum all along the edge of the potager garden where it meets the lawn.
I’ve also outlined garden beds in the ground with a row of bricks. (I know I still need to straighten those lines though!)
Creating boundaries using fences, hedges, espalier trees, stone, or other materials helps to define spaces and organize a large backyard.
If you can, use boundaries to create a sense of enclosure in your garden by installing a tall fence or hedge along one or more sides of your potager.
This will not only create a wind block and trap warmth to help your plants grow, but also adds privacy, coziness, and a feeling of being inside a room while you are outdoors.
Humans love to feel safe in wide open areas, so creating partly enclosed spaces in the garden will help bring a cozy feeling to your potager that will make you and guests want to linger.
Pick Pretty Plants
What’s a garden without plants? Vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruit trees or bushes can and should all be grown together in a potager garden.
The beauty of a potager garden is that plants are not segregated by type, but are allowed to intermingle and coexist in the same bed.
Planting lettuce next to chives, next to calendula that’s next to a clump of strawberries creates a beautiful mix where each plant contrasts and highlights the other.
Promote biodiversity and mix in flowers with your vegetables to attract pollinators and beneficial insects. I wrote this post all about companion flowers which includes great plant combinations if you need some inspiration.
Mix leaf colors, shapes, and textures. Plant big-leafed kale next to grassy-looking chives to contrast the two leaf shapes.
Choose deep purple-colored basil like Purple Ruffles or Dark Opal to grow next to your green-leafed tomato plants.
Also, there is a beautiful, decorative variety of nearly every kind of vegetable. Grow the interesting ones!
Here are a few of my own favorite varieties of commonly grown vegetables:
- Royal Burgundy Bush Beans
- Barry’s Crazy Cherry Tomato
- Purple Ruffles Basil
- Dazzling Blue Kale
- Merlot Lettuce
- Bright Lights Swiss Chard
- Fish Pepper (hot pepper plant with variegated leaves)
- Orange Spice Jalapeño
Stick to a Color Palette
When choosing flowerpots, benches, decor, and annual flowers, stick to a color palette as much as possible to make your garden look more refined and elegant.
Two or three harmonious colors will make your space feel pulled together and cohesive as opposed to random and poorly planned.
If you are the type of person who loves all the colors, however, choose a single tone of color, like all brights, or all pastels, or all earthy tones. This will still help your garden feel unified even if you have multiple colors happening.
Install Pathways
Plan and install a network of paths to get all around your kitchen garden beds.
Make them all the same width, and cover them all with the same material (i.e. mulch, gravel, etc.) to create continuity throughout your garden.
Good paths will not only help you get to where you need to go safely, but also make it easier to bring equipment like wheelbarrows in and continue a sense of rhythm and repetition in your potager garden.
Clear pathways will also make it easier to show off your garden when you’re bragging to entertaining guests.
Design a Potager Garden That You Love
Hopefully you learned that a good potager garden includes all these elements:
- functionality,
- rhythm,
- a focal point,
- vertical interest,
- boundaries,
- pretty plants,
- a color palette,
- and clear pathways.
And, ok, so maybe you shouldn’t charge people money to come look at your garden, but at the very least you should end up with a garden that looks like you could charge an entrance fee.
These 8 elements of a well-designed potager garden are guidelines to help you put your own beautiful and unique spin on your kitchen garden.
Why have a garden that just grows food or flowers when you could also have a garden that connects you with nature and beauty?
A garden that helps you slow down and admire the natural world you live in?
A garden made for living life in the moment, feeding your body and soul?
I just know your potager garden is going to look amazing this year.
I hope this article inspires you to create a garden that you love and are proud to call home.