Vegetable gardens can please eye as well as palate

’Tis the season when everyone gets the urge to plant. And if you choose to grow vegetables, there’s no need to relegate them to a far corner of your yard, where they are sure to suffer neglect.

A vegetable garden need not be an eyesore. It can be an oasis of beauty, pleasing your eyes as much as your palate.

Just visit or find a picture of Villandry, the famous French potager (“kitchen garden”) near Tours, France, with its patterns of geometric beds filled with growing vegetables. Some beds are bordered with low boxwood hedges — 19 miles of them — and the whole garden is interlaced with white, gravel paths.

In fact, call your vegetable plot a “potager” and right away you might find it more charming.
(more...)