How to Plant an Old-Fashioned Garden

By eHow Home & Garden Editor

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Memories of walking through grandma's garden, hollyhocks towering overhead with the smell of lilacs scenting the whole yard, can transport you back to a time when flowers and vegetables were grown without the benefit of chemicals and you could reach out and pick a ripe red tomato, brush it off and savor the rich taste. A fondness for heirloom plants continues to renew the popularity of the old-fashioned garden.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Step1

Design your flowerbeds with the favorites gardeners used a century ago. Line the back of the bed with tall specimens: hollyhocks, larkspur, bellflower monkshood and peonies. Medium and shorter plants go in front; use daisies and sunflowers. For the shortest, try lily of the valley, violets, pansies and asters.

Step2

Plant bulbs along the pathways. Lining the walk with daffodils, freesia, crocuses and hyacinths was popular for decades. Dig at least a foot away from the sidewalk on both sides and plant a variety for that old-fashioned look.

Step3

Grow vegetables from heirloom seeds. Modern hybrid varieties promise bigger, brighter, more disease-resistant plants, but they can't rival the harvest of yesteryear for taste or simplicity (see Resources).

Step4

Complete your old-fashioned garden by using design factors from yesteryear. Make growing beds rectangular, bordered with stones or low-growing plants. Place weathered planks between beds, serving as a walkway when the garden is wet and creating a visual division of your planted areas.

Step5

Gather and save the seeds from your heirloom flowers and vegetables for next year. Trade them with other like-minded neighbors just the way grandma did.

Step6

Join "Seed Savers Exchange." Dedicated to preserving heirloom varieties of seeds, this online website provides a place to learn about the plants of yesteryear and swap seeds with growers just like you who want to preserve non-hybrid plants (see Resources).