Design a Townhouse Garden

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we're going to talk about how to design a townhouse garden and what's the answer. So before we design our townhouse garden, we want to decide our purpose. Do you want just flowers that you can bring into the house and enjoy or do you want some hanging tomato baskets or do you want to grow some vegetables or would you like herbs? Or just make a combination. And so before you design your garden, really sit down and think about what you want to get out of your garden. Do you want some containers just for visual, you want beautiful flowers, you want fragrance or do you want more practicality? Do you want some rosemary that you can use with your pork roast? So once you've decided the types of plants that you want to grow, then make a little graph of the area where you're going to grow them. So if it's just a little five foot by three foot deck and that's all you have, that's enough because you don't need a lot of space to garden. All you need is a few containers. And if you've got an area outside where you can make some kind of raised beds, that's also great. And so make sure to when you're planning a townhouse garden, don't ever plant huge trees because they're going to get really, really big and if you have a small garden you don't want to put a ten foot tall tree right next to the house, you want to bring it way far out so that it doesn't take over. And so less is more as well. You want plants that are going to stay on the smaller side and if you want a vegetable garden, just set aside an area for vegetables and make sure if you're growing corn because they do get large to put it in the back of the bed, your lettuce, your radishes and either mints or other types of herbs in the front of the bed that stays smaller. And by making a combination too, you can always put your flowers right with your herbs and you can have your vegetables right next to a blueberry bush and it doesn't matter, you can mix it all up and the key is to make a plan and put at least small groups in groups and that way you can intermix everything. And you want to plant your spring blooming flowers like your tulips and your daffodils right along with your summer blooming lilies and calla lilies and your vegetables that grow in the summer. Because you can use that space because if you don't have the vegetables growing in the summer, you can still use that space in the spring and grow lots of pretty flowers. And you can always start your seeds indoors too after the last frost and turn around and plant them outside and then that way they'll bloom and they will be beautiful all summer through the fall. So mix and match everything and go online and there's so much information or just visit a friend's garden and get advice from everybody. But the key with gardening is just to try it and don't take it too seriously, it's like throwing a party, you just want to mix and match all the plants that you can, make sure not to get plants that are going to get really large and then that way you can have a great garden for your kitchen and for your outside enjoyment."