10 Ways to Style Your Vegetable Garden

Vegetable gardens often have the reputation of being drab, their structure based more on utilitarian function than aesthetics. However, with good design, planning, patience, and creativity, you can easily transform your garden into an art form while still obtaining a fruitful yield. From the addition of solar lights to adding colorful flowering plants, below are several ways to style your vegetable garden for a dazzling effect.

1.Grow Crops in Raised Garden Beds   

Many times, the native soil in the yard is of poor or subpar quality. Raised garden beds offer a number of benefits over traditional plots, including the ability to control the soil quality, improved drainage properties, and a more plentiful yield. Despite their constrained space, they can produce double the conventional yield from planting in rows. This can be partly attributed to the elevated sides of the bed, which offer a less compacted space for root growth. 

 

Available in neutral shades of white, grey, or green, Vego Garden Beds are designed to seamlessly integrate with the surrounding environment. Poles, supports, and trellises can be mounted to raised beds for installation and customization. With raised beds, you can navigate the various areas of your yard with ease.

2.Intersperse Garden Beds with Herbs and Flowers

The French tradition of growing potager gardens emphasizes utility, beauty, and productivity. It is a seasonal garden in which vegetables, flowers, and herbs are laid out in a formal design with respect to rhythm, line, color and texture. Typically featuring integrated pathways, grids and patterned layouts, and focal points, potager gardeners are an accessible way to add beauty to your vegetable garden. 

Establish a focal point to anchor the design. The focal point is usually an archway or trellis, a tall obelisk, or fountain, but can be anything that attracts attention. You can use pathways or lines of plants to draw line of sight towards the focal point. For a striking configuration, place four L-shaped beds around a central point.

Choose colorful and interesting varieties to plant. Vibrant and contrasting colors can really make your garden stand out. Create a vibrant tapestry by placing the jewel-like leaves of Swiss Chard next to leafy greens. Layer in brilliant colors of orange, pink, and blue with ornamental calendula, coneflowers, and sunflowers.

Construct well-defined boundaries. In medieval times, enclosures were crucial to monastic gardens, serving to foster a sense of calm and limit excessive overgrowth. An easy way to impart a clean, minimalist aesthetic to your vegetable bed is to use raised garden beds. Fences, garden paths, and hedges can also create a sense of organization. 

 

3.Use Garden Lights to Illuminate your Outdoor Space   

Whether to light up a path, accent key features, or create warmth, lights can add a whimsical ambience to your garden at night. The interplay of light and shadow can range from dramatic to subtle, but are sure to brighten up your garden after sunset. Experiment with different angles and contrasts for different areas. String lights, torches, and spotlights are popular options. Solar lights are great alternatives for those that do not have access to batteries. Simply place in your desired spot and they will automatically illuminate at night. 

4.Construct Walkways and Garden Paths  

Garden pathways are useful for delineating areas as well as enhancing the ornamental value of vegetable plots. From a subtle walkway of bark clippings to a clearly defined path of natural stone, there are many options available. The course can be straight or meandering, temporal or more permanent. For a romantic feel reminiscent of an English cottage garden, choose pebbles or herringbone brick, and pair with arches covered in flowering blooms.

5.Use Trellises and Cages to Support Vegetables

Popular crops such as peas, beans, and tomatoes often require structural support to grow. A trellis or fence is a low-maintenance way to expand your garden space and maximize productivity. Fruits, vegetables, and fresh herbs grown vertically are often healthier and highly productive. Vego Garden’s Arched Trellis System, which can be purchased to fit various configurations, is an innovative way to create a vegetable walkway.

Perfect for climbing plants, runners, vines, and ivy, this modular trellis will help to broaden your growing space by training plants upwards, providing additional space for more plants in your Vego Garden metal raised beds.

6.Encourage Wildlife to your Garden  

The decline of wildlife is a serious problem in the US, with a disastrous drop of 60% on average since 1970. With an increasing amount of wildlife being lost to urbanization, it is important to provide wildlife friendly spaces – even small changes can help create a teeming ecosystem of plant and insect life. Attract beneficial pollinators by planting butterfly-friendly plants or add a small pond to encourage frogs, toads, and other amphibians to settle.

7.Grow Colorful Edibles  

A number of colorful vegetables can impart a splash of color to an otherwise dull yard. Purple basil, Swiss chard and red cabbage are some of the brilliantly-hued vegetables you can grow for a dazzling array. When artfully arranged in blocks of color, they come together to create a living tapestry of jewel-like tones.

Tomatoes and peppers bear fruit in a myriad of colors in different shades of cream, red, purple, yellow, and orange. Look out for striking cultivars, such as black tomatoes, to further enhance your backyard.

8.Grow Fruit Trees 

Eschewing the limited form and dull colors of many vegetables, fruit trees are a great way to add visual interest and structure to your garden. Though some gardeners chose to espalier their trees by tying them to a vertical frame, others chose to grow fruit trees in pots or on the ground. The Berry Garden Bed is a compact bed ideal for berries, shrubs, or small fruit trees.

Trees grown in raised beds are easier to manage and encounter fewer weed problems.

9.Try Unique Garden Themes    

Gardens can be organized along many attributes, including type of plants grown, color scheme, and design details. Although vegetable gardens are popular among gardeners, there are many other themes you can try. If you enjoy the brooding mystique of the Victorian era or prefer a dark color palette, you might consider growing a gothic or goth garden. Incorporate medicinal herbs, glossy vegetables tinged with black, and dark flowers to evoke an eerie feeling.

10.Style your Backyard with Ornamentation    

Consider embellishing your garden space with garden ornaments, which can add a dimension to the landscape. Hanging fairy lights, artistic vintage pieces, and metal statues all help to foster a creative and quaint atmosphere. Flea markets and antique shops can be great places to forage for unique vintage pieces to accent your garden.