The Kitchen Garden (Potager)
See How to Layout a Vegetable, Herb, and Fruit Garden
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A kitchen garden provides you with fresh vegetables—and will look good doing it, too! Learn how to plan a kitchen garden in the style of either a traditional row garden layout or a potager garden, which intermixes vegetables, fruit, flowers, and herbs.
Planning Out a Kitchen Garden
With a kitchen garden, the goal is to walk outside your backdoor and select the freshest of foods for your meals. The garden is positioned right next to the house for convenient harvesting, and it is near a water source. Learn more about which vegetables and edibles to grow in a kitchen garden!
Often companion flowers are added to the same garden to encourage pollination and act as natural repellent or trap to pests. See our Companion Planting Guide.
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What Is a Potager Garden (A French Kitchen Garden)?
Some folks say that a vegetable plot would look out of place in their yard. They imagine ruler-straight rows and unsightly muddy gaps where plants have been dug up. But there’s no reason that vegetable gardens can’t be as beautiful as flower gardens!
The idea of intermingling vegetables, fruit, herbs, and flowers isn’t a new one. The French have been doing it in their “potagers” (kitchen gardens) for centuries. It’s a more casual, informal approach that works with nature and is similar to a flower garden except focused on edibles!
No chemicals are used, crops are rotated, and appropriate companion planting means natural repellents are the last word! This sustainable practice encourages a range of birds and pollinators.
With a “potager” kitchen garden, you can have your cake (well, veggies) and eat it, too!
Video: See Our Potager Kitchen Garden
Plants to Grow in a Kitchen Garden
Imagine colorful flowers with colorful edibles! Think of textures and scents, too! Here are some suggestions:
- Colorful and scented edibles: Purple basil, pink chard, scarlet runner beans, curley parsley, colorful hot pepper plants, blue-green or red cabbage leaves, bright nasturium, purple chives, rosemary, sage, thyme, savory, and blue borage, strawberries.
- Colorful and scented flowers (include self-sowers!): Bee balm, cosmos, marigolds (dwarf), mallow varieties, fragrant gerandium, sedum, columbines, coreopsis, sweet peas, poppies, globe thitle, fleabane, gladiolus, hollyhocks, speedwell.
Living Borders
Fruit trees work well in a kitchen garden! Consider espaliered apple or pear trees can be trained to grow on a brick wall or on wire fences for a see-through effect. You could also use blueberry bushes as an edible hedge.
Perennial vs. Annual Vegetables
You do want to keep annual vegetables and perennial vegetables separate in the kitchen garden to make it easier to till and amend your annual beds. For the quick-growing annuals, instead of using rows, consider creating little triangles or pockets of plantings. Then when annuals such as lettuce or radish mature, you can sow more seeds and have a succession of planting to keep the beds full.
6 Kitchen Garden Layouts and Plans
Below are some samples of different types of kitchen garden layouts (from traditional to potager) shared by Almanac gardeners! We hope they provide inspiration Find hundreds more garden plans by your location here!
1. Potager Kitchen Garden Layout
“We just finished our garden plans for our potager garden. I can’t rave enough about The Old Farmer’s Almanac’s Garden Planner. It’s completely worth the fee, if you need a more comprehensive planner.” —Read the full review from 2 Bees Farm!
Garden Location: St. John’s, Arizona
Garden Size: 59’ 11” x 59’ 11”
Garden Layout: Potager / Country garden
Sun or Shade: Sunny
Garden Soil Type: Good soil
2. Kitchen Garden Layout With Raised Beds
This is our second year in the garden!
Garden Location: Near Toronto, Canada
Garden Size: 56’ 0” x 56’ 0”
Garden Layout: Raised Beds/Home Garden
Sun or Shade: Sunny
Garden Soil Type: Good soil
3. Kitchen Garden Plan With Raised Beds
Create a three-season vegetable garden in the southern U.S. (This garden is zone 7a/b.)
Garden Location: Georgia
Garden Size: 20’ 11” x 19’ 11”
Garden Layout: Raised Beds
Sun or Shade: Sunny
Garden Soil Type: Heavy/clay soil
4. Kitchen Garden Plan: Raised Beds
“My Blue Heaven” organic garden!
Garden Location: Spokane, WA
Garden Size: 69’ 11” x 29’ 11”
Garden Type: Home garden
Garden Layout: Raised Beds
Sun or Shade: Sunny
Garden Soil Type: Good soil
5. Kitchen Garden Plan: Raised Beds
Garden Location: Charlottesville, VA
Garden Size: 20’ 11” x 19’ 11”
Garden Type: Home garden
Garden Layout: Raised Beds
Sun or Shade: Sunny
Garden Soil Type: Good soil
See full plant list.
6. Kitchen Garden Layout (Potager)
Simple country garden and orchard combo with lots of variety.
Garden Location: Mitchell, Ontario, Canada
Garden Size: 50’ 0” x 29’ 11”
Garden Type: Home garden
Garden Layout: Potager / Country garden
Sun or Shade: Sunny
Garden Soil Type: Good soil
See full plant list here.
Looking for more ideas? See our layouts for other types of gardens.
Plan Your Kitchen Garden Online
Our online Garden Planner is a super smart way to organize a kitchen garden and optimize your harvest. It calculates your plant spacing, cues which plants work best together, calculates your planting dates, and helps you become a better gardener! Try the Almanac Garden Planner here.
Jennifer Keating
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I have been a fan of farmers Almanac and had gardens for many years following your advice. Because of medical issues I can’t take care of these gardens anymore but I could raise a few vegetables in pots outside my door. I must have at least one tomato and pepper and some greens but am unsure how to pick a determinate pepper that will grow well in a pot. Can you give me a suggestion and what growing medium to use? I am grateful for your help. Thank you.
Vivian, we can not identify “determinate” peppers anywhere; as you know, that is more commonly a type of tomato. Here are a few pepper varieties, all of which will grow successfully in pots:
• hot peppers: ‘Cubanelle,’ ‘Cherrytime,’ ‘Jalapeno,’ ‘Apple (Hot),’ ‘Red Cherry’ and ‘Red Chile’
• larger (milder) peppers: ‘Sweet Banana,’ ‘Lady Bell,’ ‘Gypsy,’ ‘Crispy,’ ‘New Ace,’ ‘Bell Boy’ and ‘Sweet Chocolate’
Hope this helps! Thank you for your interest in The Old Farmer’s Almanac!
Sweet red lipstick peppers are amazing growing peppers that are lunchbox size and I would highly recommend for a pot. Another variety is sweet orange etuda pepper and it is lunchbox size as well and will grow in a pot. Wishing you a happy growing season. Just an FYI I’m disabled and live in an apartment and I grow both of those pepper plants in my apartment in just nutrient rich water in 5 gallon buckets and they grow year round with full spectrum warm white T5 grow lights. So much easier to garden indoors!! No weeding and no pests and to pollinate them I would do it myself just by tickling the inside of each blossom. Good luck and happy growing!
Hello hello, in a executive chef and owner of a boutique hotel in Santa Fe New Mexico. We will start building a cooking school and I've thought about the beuty of a potager besides the kitchen. I will really appreciate if you can give ideas and support me with this project.
In gratitude,
Carolina
Hi Carolina, Sounds exciting! We would encourage you to just experiment with a free 7-day trial of the Garden Planner where you’ll find many more potager examples, a free newsletter, and lots of tools and inspiration.
Would be nice to also show a kitchen garden for the north. I'm in Wisconsin and I don't think the Virginia garden would be appropriate for the north.
There are several gardens on this page for the north and are relevant.
