Talk about a veggie patch!

Another stop on Outhouse’s recent tour of UK gardens was Chatsworth House Gardens, home to this incredible kitchen garden. This is a veggie patch on a massive scale!

We love this garden because it shows the importance of balancing hard and soft, in achieving a productive garden that also offers aesthetic value. The wide paths, brick garden beds and charming sheds and glasshouses all offer a permanent sense of structure and order to the space, which is then offset by the seasonal abundance and even wildness of the planting.

It offers a lesson that can even be applied in a small Sydney garden: productive kitchen gardens don’t need to be hidden away, but nor should they be places where the green is given free rein – make sure there is room to move and sound surfaces to walk on, solid walls and structures where possible and above all a sense of order, to counterbalance the occasional bad hair days every veggie patch is bound to have.