Your Weekly Voilà! Starting a French Kitchen Garden 😊💕🌱🇫🇷

"The kitchen garden satisfies both requirements, a thing of beauty and a joy for dinner." - Peter Mayle

Spring has sprung. Again, I find myself with a very different garden situation. Here in southwest France, the owner of the property has offered an abundance of land to grow plants; it's 180 degrees from my balcony garden in Berlin, Germany. Not to worry. I did remember my promise to keep the garden plan manageable. There is no sense to take on more than you can comfortably maintain. A coffee farm in Hawaii taught me that valuable lesson. So I begin small with a few beds and plan my French potager or kitchen garden with layers of vegetables, fruits, flowers, herbs, and dye plants that can expand over time.

Potager in French literally means "for the soup pot." Everything grown just a short distance from the kitchen is edible. Since Medieval times, French gardeners have intermingled vegetables, fruits, herbs, medicinal and dye plants, tisanes, and a variety of flowers in their kitchen gardens. If you prefer neat and tidy rows for your tomatoes and beans, then a Renaissance garden plan is for you. However, if you love to combine beautiful and useful plants that are beneficial to each other, go into available spots with just a slight consideration to color and texture, you might enjoy creating a simple French potager.

The European vegetable garden has its origins in the Middle Ages. Monks laid out their vegetable patches in geometric shapes and worked to achieve the overall design of crosses. There are many crosses in the potager at the Château Villandry in the Loire Valley, illustrating the château's and garden's monastic roots.

The reason I love this type of garden is that it's both beautiful and functional. While a few flowers might find their way into my garden on their beauty alone, most plants serve a purpose. Form and function. Each part of the garden works together to create a beneficial collection for my dinner table, dye pot, medicine chest, or just my morning cup of tea.

Yet, a French kitchen garden does not mean "willy nilly." There is a bit of thought that goes into creating something that looks like you just "threw it together." Such is the French way. You have to make careful choices, consider color, what plants thrive together, and how to stretch the garden over an entire season. It is much like an artist creating a painting:

You need to consider composition and the final design as well as key ingredients for your favorite recipes.

Some years ago, there was a garden in this same general area. There are wild blackberries on one side and fruit trees on the other. Tim did most of the hard labor of tilling up the beds with a shovel and I broke up the clumps of grass and leveled the beds. A bit of weed whipping to knock down the tall grass and we have the start of a potager. I'll continue to share the garden's story on Instagram. Follow our progress @livingafrenchlife

Mustard grows like a weed. It also self-sows; no need to start it every year. You can grow mustard in small pots and use it as microgreens. This mustard seed I brought from Burgundy to Berlin and it grew very well in my window boxes. There was enough seed to make homemade mustard and share with neighbors. I like to use the tender leaves in my salad or on a sandwich. Just a bit will do because it is sharp.

Let's look for some inspiration from France's most famous and grand Renanissance potager - Villandry in the Loire Valley. This kitchen garden is the high point of your visit to this château. It consists of squares planted with a different geometric motif of vegetables and flowers. Everything comes under consideration. Color. Texture. Companion plantings. You'll find the blue of the leek tops, red cabbage and beetroot, the feathery greens of carrots. The potager is designed as it would have looked in the 16th century using both the monastic influence of the geometric shapes and crosses as well as the influence of an Italian garden's emphasis on decorative elements such as fountains and arbors. The result is nothing short of spectacular. Absolutely add Château Villandry to your list to visit the next time you are traveling through the Loire Valley.

The kitchen garden at Villandry has two plantings each year: One in spring which remains in place from March to June; the second is in summer from June to November. Forty species of vegetables are used each year. The layout changes with each planting, both for the purpose of harmony of color and crop rotation. Everything is perfect in this garden thanks to a team of 10 full-time gardeners.

My mother and I spent an entire day exploring just the gardens at Villandry a few years ago. I'm ready for another visit when travel is permitted again. Did I mention the very sweet gift shop? Oh yes. Lovely packages of seeds. Precious for your garden and to give as gifts. And you will most definitely find something way too big or too heavy that you must bring back to decorate your potager. I speak from experience.

Wherever you live in the world, may you be connected to beauty and bounty of a garden.

I have previously shared the chart below of my favorite herbs. It serves as a simple starting point to plan your own garden. Begin with a list of herbs you enjoy and then think about how you would like to create a potager. I like to start with herbs because they are truly the mainstay of my garden and then add in the next "layer" - such as tomatoes, aubergine, lemon cucumbers. Consider larger fruit bearing plants such as raspberries and plan accordingly for trellis needs. If possible, try to put in the "hardscape" at the start, rather than attempting to fit it in around existing plants. Currently, I am not following my own advice. I'm trying to install simple wattle (woven thin branches) edging around the beds after the first salad starts were planted. It is not going well. But I wasn't sure if we were going to need a serious fence around the garden or just to keep the dogs on the paths. So far it's just the pups that I have to worry about. We'll work it out. Just not "pretty" at the moment.

Your potager doesn't need to be as grand as the vegetable garden at the Château de Villandry. Sometimes the kitchen garden can be as simple as a few clay pots on an apartment balcony or a sunny window box ready to provide you something fresh for your dinner salad.

But no matter the size, remember that lavender is obligatoire in any French garden!

I have lots of plans to grow the garden. While I tend to forage for my dye and ink colors, I have sourced dye plant seeds from a fellow dyer just outside of Toulouse. Pastel (woad), weld, madder, and cosmos will all make valuable contributions to my dye pot.

I would also like to add a perfume section. In Hawaii, I made natural perfumes and I miss the opportunity to keep my nose engaged. There is something about finding a favorite flower and working with other notes to make a natural perfume all your own. Ylang-ylang is my favorite scent. Unfortunately, the vine will not grow in our climate. (We're zone 8 maybe 9 with climate changes.) No worries. Chanel No. 5 satisfies that desire. Lavender, roses, gardenia, jasmine, verbena, and maybe even neroli with a bit of attention will provide wonderful ingredients for a future project. They are all on my plant list.

I'm looking forward to hunting for French touches for my garden. It's a rustic garden, to be sure. So maybe not grand weathered urns or decorative finials. But I'd love some old baskets. Too worn to be of service in the house or studio but perfect to hold the ginger and lemongrass. Olive jars would look wonderful too. I have requested three tuteurs to hold the pole beans. (Tim fait.) And there is a perfect spot set aside for a bench, a place to rest after weeding to enjoy some lavender lemonade.

A bouquet garni is French for "garnished bouquet." A bundle of aromatic herbs that you select to flavor soups, sauces, or casseroles. There is no one recipe. I select the herbs that best fit the dish I am preparing. But the classic French trio is a bundle comprised of parsley, a bay leaf or two, and thyme. Be sure to plant all three in your potager. For more on cooking with a bouquet garni, see my archived Weekly Voilà here.

Was it Audrey Hepburn who said the famous quote, "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow"? How appropriate a sentiment these days. Gardening is an investment in the future. From one week for microgreens to ten years for black cherries, a garden has you thinking about the years ahead. It's important to consider more than just the thought of the upcoming harvest.

Enjoy the design process. Reveling in the compost. Tying the tomatoes for the first time. Then the delight of preparing summer's first dish of Ratatouille. (Yep. There is a recipe in the archived Weekly Voilàs found here.)

A potager does represent both a thing of beauty and a delight for the dinner table. There is also a bit of historical significance and definitely elements of sustainability and wellness. I like to be close to the food I eat. I receive pleasure from seeing it grow, knowing there are no harmful chemicals added. If well-planned and attended to, a kitchen garden will provide inspiration as well as delicious ingredients for your family's table. It's a luxury that should be enjoyed by all.

Wishing you the opportunity to dig in the dirt this weekend.

À bientôt mon amie,
Karen 😊💕🌱🇫🇷