Sustainable Gardening in Small Spaces

Choosing the right layout (shape) of your garden will save space, reduce labor, and create a better balance for plants and pollinators.  The shape of a garden determines how much area can actually be planted, sustaining a healthy environment to maximize annual production.  For example traditional hedgerow gardening ‘pathways’ can consume a large amount of your planting area opposed to thinking outside the proverbial box and planting in a natural pattern where pathway usage is reduced 8 fold. 

Vegetable and herb gardens do not have to be planted in straight rows, they can have curves and movement and in some cases vertical movement (as I will explain a little later).  Constructing a planting area in a round shape with a central pathway can maximize a small space and offer a great diversity of planting options.  Referring this type of planting as a ‘zone’ system, the plants that are harvested frequently should be planted closest to the pathway.  This would include your herbs for instance.  The second course you would then install vegetation that gets picked regularly over the growing season, such as your tomatoes, eggplant and beans.  Finally your outer area would be the ‘one and done’ plants such as potatoes, lettuce, etc.  This type of gardening creates endless possibilities and as I have found, being creative not only adds excitement to something that may normally fee mundane and repetitious from year to year. 

There is no limit to design and creative possibilities such as planting small fruit trees and perennial nitrogen-fixer plants that could provide good wind-and-weed barriers.

Now let’s think totally outside the box and maximize a very small space to build a spiral herb garden 5’ across at the base rising to a height of 3’ above grade.  A spiral garden approximately 5’ across by 3’ in height would equal 27 linear feet of pathside plants.  To construct this style of garden, all you need is a mound of good soil and some melon sized boulders inserted in a spiral pattern winding inward from the bottom.  By constructing a vertical greenspace, you have now created slopes that face in all directions, providing you great versatility in your herb choices, ranging from part sun / shade to full sun.  Also, the soil at the bottom of this spiral will stay wetter than at the top, so plant accordingly and have fun this spring with your creative side and get the children involved.  

If you would like more information on different multipurpose plants, please email me at eric@florapacifica.com and visit us at our http://twitter.com/florapacifica