Vegetables were everywhere at this year's show, so we asked Joy Larkcom how to create the ideal kitchen garden.

In this article

Design Planting

Maintenance Making your potager a success

From Anthea Guthrie's Mediterranean vegetable patch in the Torres Tapas Garden, to the edible hanging basket competition, incorporating the veg patch into garden designs was a real trend this year. But one of the prettiest had to be the ancient art of potager gardening, captured by designer Philippa Pearson in the tiny Sadolin Garden of Regeneration.

Potty about vegetables

Potagers (gardens that incorporate vegetable and floral planting) are incredibly easy to adapt to your own back garden, and they can transform the tiniest of spaces into an enchanting formal garden that's useful as well as looking gorgeous.

They have a long tradition: over 400 years ago, French peasants began creating tiny, beautiful gardens out of the vegetables they grew for the "potage", or soup, and at the other end of the scale, the Potager du Roy, at Versailles covered 21 acres and supplied the kitchens of Louis XIV.

"I always think of it as a kitchen garden touched with the paintbrush of imagination," says Joy Larkcom, pioneering vegetable gardener, potager owner, and author of Creative Vegetable Gardening.

Here's her advice on how to have your kale and eat it - however small your space.

"A vegetable doesn't care what shape the bed is," says Joy. "Just look at your plot and decide what shape would fit in."

Geometric shapes work well for potagers, and triangles and L-shapes can look particularly good. Use fewer, larger beds as this is more practical than lots of fiddly small ones, and a symmetrical pattern will give you a stylish, formal outline to set off your plants.

Finally, as with all good garden design, don't forget to include a focal point. A bean-covered archway or tall pot overflowing with chillies will draw the eye to the centre of your potager.

Notice the colours and textures of your veg plants and use them just like ornamentals. Try Beetroot 'Bull's Blood' for deepest red; Swiss chard for pure white and green; and red cabbages for a dusky purple. Kale is good for heavily wrinkled texture, while carrots have light, feathery foliage. Contrast light and dark, smooth and rough, tall plants and low-growing ground-cover.

Try planting in diagonal rows, or in circles and zig-zags. As you're working with annuals, you can try a new pattern every year. If it doesn't work, try something different next spring. And don't forget the edges: "I like to eat my edges," says Joy. "Alpine strawberries and herbs look nice: or you can use contrasting colours of lettuce."

The secret of keeping your potager looking good, says Joy, is to keep a few extra veg around to fill gaps as they arise. "Sow everything in pots or modules. That way you've always got a few spares."

Stakes and supports are important, too: "There's a fine line between 'sweet disorder' and chaos. It's so easy to let the natural look get out of control: you've got to support things in time so they don't flop over the path."

• Forget everything you thought about how vegetables ought to be grown.
• Start with good-quality soil and plants.
• Include fruit: cordon-trained berries make great dividers, while stepover apples can be used as edging.
• Let some things run to seed. Parsnip seedheads, for example, make beautiful structural shapes for winter, and you'll be able to sow them in spring, too.