Vegetable Gardening with a Master

Rosalind Creasy is known nationally and internationally for her inspired landscape designs that use herbs and vegetables ornamentally. So it was a special treat to be given a private tour of her home garden during the APLD conference in the Bay Area last fall. Creasy explained how finding substitutes for more traditional plants (e.g., rosemary shrubs for boxwoods or other low evergreen hedging material) enabled her to win over her neighbors – and at the same time the design world – in her early years working in the garden. Now she lives in a residential neighborhood in the Bay Area with chicken coops in the front yard and edible plants framed within  more traditional settings – patios and arbors, raised planting beds and “parterres” of rosemary.

In our mid-Atlantic region, there is a renewed interest in raising vegetables in our gardens, so having the opportunity to see Creasy’s home garden was an inspiration. (OK, so rosemary shrubs would be a bit of a stretch here. But her encouragement to the designers on our tour to search out heirloom vegetables and think outside the box was wonderful). For more information about Creasy’s books, a link to her blog, and lots of useful advice about vegetable gardening, check out her website.

Rosalind Creasy greets visitors under a welcoming arch framing the entry to her front garden.

Vegetables fresh from Creasy’s garden.

More produce from the garden.

Profusion in structured spaces, the hallmark of good garden design, carried over into Creasy’s front yard vegetable garden.

Annuals provide additional color in the garden.

Red is a favorite color in the front yard.

Creating hedges of rosemary allows an ornamental vegetable garden to look “tidier” – and thus more acceptable to traditional tastes – than might otherwise be expected.

In the back yard, more shade – but still enough sun to grow herbs and vegetables.

Non-irrigated areas in the back garden allow for bulbs to flourish as well.

About these ads

Explore posts in the same categories: Environment, Landscape design solutions, photography

Tags: California gardens, D300, Nikon 24-120mm f/4, vegetable gardening

You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.