Kitchen gardens are grown outdoors in the garden and are essential to many gourmet chefs and food aficionados. Your first thought of a kitchen garden may be of herbs, but don't overlook salad greens and vegetables.
French Garden
A French culinary garden would include the components of traditional fines herbs: thyme, summer savory, marjoram, sage, and basil. Other French flavors include tarragon, dill, chives, watercress, and leeks.
Mediterranean Garden
Italian and Greek flavors in a kitchen garden include include vegetables such as tomato, onion, garlic, peppers and broccoli. The herb flavors you'll need are parsley, basil, oregano, lemon balm, rosemary, marjoram, and fennel.
Salsa Garden
With a few minor changes, the Mediterranean style garden becomes a Salsa garden. Skip the fennel and lemon balm, adding chili peppers, coriander, cumin, and cilantro.
Soup and Stew Garden
The Soup garden can provide the basis for many wonderful fall seasonal soups and stews. Vegetables for this garden include onions, carrots, peppers, parsnips, rutabagas, beans, potatoes, and corn. For flavoring, bay, garlic, rosemary, summer savory, thyme, parsley, sage, cilantro and chives.
Native American Garden
Another natural theme for a kitchen garden that has historical overtones is the Native American garden. Many of the plants will be the same as a Colonial garden and are also valued for their medicinal values. Commonly called the "Three Sisters" corn, beans and squash are the foundation of this garden. Additional plants would include chives, wild lettuce, wild strawberries, blueberries, muscadines, blackberries, sunflowers, echinacea, hyssop, sage, yarrow, and all varieties of mint.
