Creating Your Kitchen Garden

Trying to stay true to the earliest medieval kitchen garden, le potager (vegetable garden with deep historical tradition), is about understanding them, and not trying to re-create them.  It is about simplicity, becoming self dependent on fresh authentic food.  It is about balancing spirit and soul.  

Our kitchen gardens should be paradise, a mainstay of our everyday landscape, not a disjointed separation of space.  It should be an artistic expression of you, your passion and personality.  This can be achieved from layout through the plants that you choose to grow, from vegetables to perennials. 

There are a few main things to consider when designing your potager such as site conditions (sun angles, micro-climates), the amount of space you wish to develop, your maintenance and harvest of your kitchen garden, watering, fauna, and proximity to your kitchen as a well placed potager is an extension of your kitchen, not placed in the ‘back forty’ of your property.  Are you going to create raised gardens within your kitchen garden (preferably) and how are you going to create your welcome mat, your entry piece that tells people they are welcomed, and please enter?  his can be accomplished by a simple trellis planted with grapes or simpler yet, a gate attached to a free standing pole that is always open, mingling with a hedgerow of lavender.

Infuse art into your kitchen garden, by adding colored planting vessels or a bright blue picnic table immersed in monochromatic hues of green background such as pole beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) hops (Humulu lupulus) and hardy kiwi (Actinidia argula).  Create intrigue by developing a secret garden within your kitchen garden, a light and airy space, a place to escape the day – to – day routines.  A place enclosed by an edible wall of elderberries, with a fountain and a place to rest.

Plant plants that nourish beneficial insects such as anise hyssop (Agastache spp) coneflower (Echinacea) and bee balm (Monarda) to name a few.  Have fun, be creative and always remember never plant from the same family in the same space in successive year.

LEED Application in Sustainable Landscape Practices (second in a series)

Credit 7:  Landscape and Exterior Design to Reduce Heat Islands

Sustainability begins with design; clear, precise design objectives with long term management objectives.  Long term planning and management to reduce heat islands, is a LEED accredited application that can be obtained by several design methods.  Heat island effects are caused by solar energy retention on constructed surfaces in urban areas, elevating the temperature differential between urban and rural environments between 2 and 9 degrees.  Streets, sidewalks, parking lots and roofs are the primary contributors.  The increased urban development and rising temperatures caused by heat island effects also has proven to have a negative effect on wildlife and their habitats.  Mitigation techniques include maximizing shade-producing vegetation that can increase shade during all seasons to combat varying sun angles and by reducing heat island effect by increasing shade by 30 percent will meet LEED certification requirements.  Vegetation will reduce solar absorption on non pervious surfaces and also cool the air through evapotranspiration (commonly referred to ET).  Using an alternative material for paving or concrete that has a high-albedo solar reflecting value of 0.3 or higher will also reduce the heat absorption that leads to heat islands.  Materials such as subsurface grasscrete (a structural grid / paver installed below grade that is typically planted with vegetation) and turfstone pavers planted with vegetation are perfect alternatives to your traditional paving materials, allowing you the flexibility to reduce heat absorption and the cost per square foot is typically lower to install.  Green roofs and living walls will mitigate heat island effects and create passive solar and currently only green roofs are recognized certified LEED when a vegetated roof envelops at least 50 percent of the roof area.  Living walls are currently being reviewed by the LEED program and will be recognized and accredited in their new standards scheduled for release in 2012.

Innovation in design is a LEED certified application and by choosing sustainable design topics such as heat island reduction within a sustainable site, the accredited value for LEED recognition continues to increase.

Resources:

Heat Island Group Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:  http://eetd.lbl.gov/HeatIsland/