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Kitchen gardens have delighted gardeners with their beauty and fresh harvests for centuries. The Art of the Kitchen Garden, in glorious full color, makes it easy for anyone with an interest in gardening and fresh produce to enjoy a beautiful and productive kitchen garden. This elegant book celebrates the old world traditions of designing and planting a garden by emphasizing artistic design, dazzling color arrays, and the details that make each garden unique. Vivid photos and detailed color illustrations help even those with little experience succeed at kitchen gardening. The book includes helpful instructions for creating and maintaining a personalized kitchen garden, proven guidance for selecting the best plants, and expert advice for combining color, texture, and height for delightful results. It's a stunning and informative read for gardeners who grow either ornamentals or vegetables.
The Gertleys' book concentrates on the design styles for a kitchen garden, based on the parterre de broderie, which achieved its ultimate glory at Versailles. They use a series of simple geometric shapes to achieve their parterre gardens as their designs become increasingly complex. They derive design inspiration from Celtic knots, Japanese crests, and quilt patterns.
Their designs are inspirational to view however, their gardens are very demanding of their creators. The designs might raise or fall on the placement of a radish and are not especially functional. I am a cook first, gardener second, and artist last when it comes to potagers.
Their methodology requires far more nitty-gritty planning than suits my preferred approach. It often appears at counter purposes to a kitchen garden that is meant to supply the table since it is so meticulously groomed and cared for and harvested with such additional planning in order not to destroy the patterns made by the vegetables.
The book’s approach is much like Charlie Tuna asking; “Do you want tunas with good taste? Or, do you want tuna dat tastes good?”
I admire the design talent and illustrations if not the philosophy.
Extremely useful for designing and planting a vegetable garden that is appealing to both the eye and the taste buds. Beautiful pictures and very helpful instructions.
