A Modern Potager Front Garden

When we moved into our first house, many years ago now, I was really impressed by the house on the corner of the street. Behind a hedge the garden was filled with cauliflowers, cabbages and other veggies. Climbing up strings attached to the guttering of an single story extension, runner beans.

That was the first time I’d seen someone break the convention of a decorative front garden. I can’t recall seeing anyone else with a productive front garden until we visited a friend in rural France. One of the houses on the edge of the village had a large front  garden filled with orderly rows of vegetables. I wish I’d taken a picture of it, a thing of beauty.

An Attractive Modern Day Potager Garden.

Potager Garden Beds

Potager Garden Beds

Well towards the end of last year, I was asked if I had any tips or advice for setting up a raised planter style allotment in a front garden. I really couldn’t contribute much but that’s not slowed Paul Cooper down. He’s converted the bare patch in front of his new-build house to a productive and attractive modern day potager garden.

He told me

We’re on a new build estate in Newcastle Upon Tyne and my plan is to utilise the walls to have Espalier/Fan/Cordon trained fruit right the way around to the front of the garage, so at least 8-10 trees(or more?), and would like to grow as many fruits/variations as my conditions will allow.

The walls/allotment face south/south-west, but the site is very open to the prevailing winds (as I type this it’s blowing a hooligan!). We have a new hedge in place, but this will take at least 4-5 years to provide any useful protection, though the 2 walls nearest the garage and the garage walls themselves are quite protected by some more established estate plants/tees/hedging, again these are south/south west facing walls.

Paul runs a top-end specialist flooring business and obviously has a good eye for design. That comes in handy for designing an eye-catching potager garden as well as helping people pick the right flooring for their house.

Now, near a year later the bare earth is transformed. Paul says

It’s been a strange and challenging Spring & Summer, but I’ve had the most wonderful time planting and growing my own veg this year.

It’s astonishing, and a little embarrassing if I’m honest(!), at the amount of people and passers by, that have stopped to admire and compliment me on the transformation of our front garden, but of most interest to people I think, is the “novelty” of growing veg along with and alongside the flowers and plants!

Its very evident to me that a lot of people are still thrilled to see veg being grown, and the “novelty” of it being grown at home even more of an attraction.

I hope I’ve encouraged more people to have a go!!

Hopefully these photos will also encourage people to have a go. Let’s replace boring squares of grass with a path to the door by productive, decorative modern potager gardens.

Incidentally, you might like to look at some potager gardens on a larger scale here!

Bare Earth in front of house

Starting with a patch of bare earth in front of the house wall

Empty Raised Beds

Setting up the raised beds – note the extra corner bed on the bed. A nice design feature.

Planted raised beds with gravel paths between

An overview of the front garden design

View of raised beds from house side to road side

The raised beds from the house side to the road

Potager Raised Beds Detail

This shows the variety of plants more clearly. Note the fan trained fruit on the rear wall and hanging baskets.

Posted in Allotment Garden Diary
6 comments on “A Modern Potager Front Garden
  1. chris forrest says:

    Great achievement well done. apart from the produce saving run off during heavy rain.

  2. Peter Dixon says:

    Very attractive design and implementation. What did you use to construct the walls?

  3. paul beer says:

    Great idea and looks fantastic, the design of raised beds are very eye catching. Could you please share what materials you used?

    Thanks Paul.

    • Paul Cooper says:

      Hi Paul, the beds are pretty heavy construction as we wanted them to be a feature themselves, and so for longevity etc we used 6 x 2 boards for the main frame, painted black and a reclaimed timber that has an almost burnt finish to it, which a local timber merchant happened to have as a bit of a job lot, and these have been used to clad the planters. The sides of the insides have also been heavily “tanked” with a ground sheet/DPM to protect the timber from rotting. Hope thats helpful. Best wishes, Paul

  4. Rowan Bowman says:

    What a marvellous garden. How tall are the main containers, and do you find that height comfortable to work with, or would you alter them if doing it again?

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