The ultimate garden

I consider myself to be a pretty fanatical gardener, but lawns, rockeries, herbaceous borders, shrubberies, gravel terraces and the like do absolutely nothing for me. My kind of gardening centers around food and I am fascinated by edible plants of all kinds: annual vegetables, perennial vegetables, water vegetables, bush fruit, stone fruit, tree fruit, citrus, vines, edible wild plants, useful weeds, herbs and much more. I will attempt to grow any food plants I can get my hands on, even if I know it has no chance of making it in my climate (bananas, papayas, avocados), just to get to know it a bit better. When I started my garden I had a vague idea of creating the ultimate food garden, one filled with every edible plant I could find that would grow here. This is a lot because I’m very fortunate to have a climate that allows me to grow a very wide range of species from both cool and warm climates.

Because the main purpose of my garden is to produce food sustainably, a large proportion of the plants are edible, useful or contribute to garden fertility (the rest are mainly natives). I have found that the most practical way to do this, without creating an overwhelming amount of work, is to split the garden up into several areas. My annual vegetable garden gets most of the attention because it is the most efficient way to grow the familiar crops that we eat every day. I also have a lot of fruit trees and shrubs (these produce much delicious food with so little work), scattered all over the place and some in a kind of semi-wild semi-forest garden setting. I also have areas for bush fruit and arbors for vines. There are still many vacant areas, but I aim to eventually fill them with plants that are both productive and low maintenance (chestnuts, blackberries).

The food garden isn’t just a place for growing delicious food, it has other, less obvious, benefits too. It can improve your health physically through better nutrition and gentle but sustained exercise. It is a refuge where you can reconnect with nature and soothe your frazzled 21st century psyche. It further enhances your life by stimulating the senses, challenging you intellectually and artistically, and by providing a beautiful, biologically rich and peaceful place to live. It also helps to reduce your impact on the earth, not only by growing food (home grown food requires far less energy and water to grow than commercial agriculture) but also by giving you a way to reduce, reuse and recycle household waste products. It can even supply a lot of the materials (posts, poles, rocks) needed for its own construction.

The food garden even gives you a way of reclaiming some independence in a world where most people are totally dependent on a system that is out of control and unsustainable. A sizeable food garden is also a form of unemployment insurance, because food is the one essential of life that isn’t usually free. If you lose your job tomorrow you might be able to support yourself by growing something of value (and even if you can’t sell it, you can eat it).

The garden isn’t a farm though and productivity isn’t the only concern, it is also your home, a place to be lived in and you should give some thought as to how you can make it comfortable.  You mainly do this by creating beautiful spaces where you can relax and enjoy your surroundings, places to sit and talk in the evening, interesting places for the children to play, a place to dry laundry. Make these areas special with a combination of furniture, artwork, water, productive plants (also beautiful and maybe scented) and other fun stuff. There is no reason the productive garden can’t be as beautiful and comfortable as any ornamental garden (and all the more pleasurable for being a place of production).

Few existing gardens actually accomplish all of the things I want from a garden, but it isn’t at all difficult to achieve There are three aspects to creating a productive garden, design, construction and management. As you might expect designers tend to over-emphasize the importance of the design part, but it is actually the least important. You just need enough design to get the various components in the right places in relation to the sun, the land and each other and to put the plants in the right places. Most food gardens end up containing variations of the same components, because these are the ones humans need and use. These commonly include an annual vegetable garden, a patio or deck living area, a fairly ornamental front entrance garden (planted with the most attractive food plants), a play area, herb garden, water garden, greenhouse, shed, workshop. Areas not needed for a specific purpose can be planted with low maintenance plants that produce food without too much attention (food producing trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, annuals and fungi). There is no need to worry about making the perfect design right from the start, just go at your own pace, in your own way, for your own satisfaction. You will do a lot of the design while you are actually constructing the garden and dealing with real garden problems.

Design doesn’t stop even when the garden is established though, as you will come up with many improvements during your day to day gardening activities. In fact this is when you really get to know the garden and its (and your) needs. Once set in motion the garden will keep evolving and changing, a little piece at a time, for as long as you live in it. Circumstances change, the plants get bigger, you grow plants and materials for various projects, you gain new insights, find interesting new plants and generally one thing leads to another. Persistence is more important than special skills or knowledge (you acquire these during the process of creating the garden). The ideal is to create a garden that maintains itself without consuming all of your free time, but in reality it probably will anyway (because you will want it to, rather than because you need to).