I have vege beds interlaced with flowers and yard art. Also an herb garden mixed with flowers I consider it a potager. I guess a "kitchen garden" would be only veges? I don't really know.

I do basically the same as you. In my mind they're very similar.

I call ours a kitchen garden, because it's not quite as formal as a potager...but same idea :)

I consider a "Cottage Garden" as a more formal, but a Pottager garden as more informal. Nancy

Nancy- I think it's the other way round....cottage gardens are more informal and potagers have formal layouts. Potager beds are often edged with boxwood and are smaller versions of the formal French gardens and Paradise gardens of the Middle East.

Cottage gardens are often fenced (usually to keep livestock out) and have a mixture of fruit, herbs, vegetables and flowers that were used by the family. Potager gardens are also fenced, but the layout tends to be more in raised beds (not placed where it will fit) and flowers and herbs are used as borders to the beds, if not boxwoods.

I prefer a more formal layout for the kitchen garden (which is what I call it) and the rest of the gardens look more casual, or cottage like. Curved beds and lots of shrub roses with herbs tucked in between....or flowers and herbs around the fruit trees. Much less structured than the kitchen garden. I guess that's the main difference....potagers are much more structured :)

I think it's just fun using different names. My garden is informal, although it does have a decorative fence around it. I grow veggies, herbs, and flowers.

kitchen garden or potager

LL, did you ever finish your garden?

Cindy- No, but I'm working on it this year. Hopefully, we'll get the fence up before the end of the summer. So much gardening to do this year, with my mom moving down. We do have a new plan for the potager/kitchen garden, though....so that's progress :)

Well, looking at Cindy's link, mine is definitely a pottager! Mostly veges with herbs and flowers and a couple of fruit trees. We are re-thinking more fruit trees cause there are only the 2 of us and I don't eat much fruity things like jam, pie etc.

It's easier to just steal from the neighbor ;) or go to the farmers market. Nancy

Potager gardens were the gardens near the kitchen looked after by the cook where the cook could grow small amounts of vegetables, herbs and even fruit. Other gardens were the purview of the men and were larger and grew larger amounts of produce. Many potager gardens grew leeks, shallots, walking onions, a few potatoes, tomatoes, sage, rosemary and other herbs, various greens and often beans and peas. the garden was near the kitchen and often made attractive by adding some flowers. The women typically took care of the potager garden, whereas the men took care of larger growing spaces. I remember my grandmother working in her potager garden while my grandfather worked in a larger garden further away from the house. Grandma grew Egyptian walking onions that she could harvest year around, sage and rosemary also year around and leeks. A corner of the garden had a small space for potatoes, maybe 4 plants, a corner for tomatoes, also 4 plants and Swiss chards making up the border near the walkway. Grandma had a small peach tree in the middle of the garden and a bee hive under it.