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prairiemoon2

Vegetable Garden design fitting into the landscape?

I have a small 1/4 acre property and grow vegetables. I have wooden beds that are ready to be replaced and I've decided to basically double the number of vegetable beds. I've pretty much decided how many and where they need to go for sunlight but still making minor decisions about size of the beds and placement.

Of course, I want it to look as aesthetically pleasing as it can, because it's not in an out of the way corner, since it's a small yard.

I have 4x4 size beds at the moment because my backyard is very rectangular and flat and squares appealed to me. The long sides of the entire backyard are east and west and are 90ft with the house parallel on the east side. The short sides are south and north and about 45ft. The vegetable area needs to be in the north 1/3 end of the backyard rectangle open to the sun in the south.

The area I have available is about 20 square feet more or less. I want to build 2 long beds and 6 small beds. The possible sizes are 16ft x 4ft, or 12.5ft x 4ft for the two long beds. The small beds I'm thinking of making them 4x5ft or 4x6ft. And I need a 2.5ft path between the beds while still lining up the large and small beds. It probably makes very little difference between these sizes. It will end up being a 20ft sq of vegetable beds regardless. I just keep thinking there might be something else to do that might fit the landscape better, but I'm not seeing it.

I thought of arranging the beds diagonally which might make the yard look larger? But I ran into issues with tree roots in that position, so I've let go of that idea, I think. I probably should go try them going in the other direction before giving up on it.

Then I keep thinking of trying to break up the 20x20 square area and place the beds more randomly in some way. Haven't figured out a way to do it that pleases me, yet.

Or putting the long beds in an arrow point and filling in behind them with the smaller beds.

Or making all the beds all the same size and different dimensions. Or graduated sizes. The only thing that needs to remain constant is the 4ft sides of each bed, no more or less, and the pathways that are best at 2.5ft.

The perimeter of the yard is curving beds of shrubs. I plan on accentuating the curve of those beds and adding a curved pathway either through the vegetable bed area or along the east side of it. I also want to shape the lawn that remains into an oval shape, it's a little too large for a circle.

One last thing I want to do, is add a water garden in a galvanized tub. I've seen a photo of it done and they have circular sizes and rectangular rounded end sizes. And I'd either want to place it between the vegetable beds and an adjacent sitting area, along the pathway, or incorporate it into the vegetable area. There is a photo below of one of the water gardens in the vegetable garden area that I'm looking at. My beds will only be one foot high and I think the beds in that photo are higher than that.

So I guess I'm wondering about all the different shapes, mostly rectangles and curves and how best to combine them and make them fit into the landscape. Wondering if anyone has any ideas or thoughts?

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