2007 Veggie Garden

After spending the cold northern Indiana winter months watching HGTV, I was inspired to revamp my vegetable garden. I couldn't figure out how to get an HGTV TV crew and their staff of workers to come help, so I enlisted the help of my semi-reluctant hubby.

The idea for the garden design started with the arbor I bought at the end of the season last year. It probably was pretty nice at the beginning of the season, judging by the $199 price sticker, but by the time I came across it in October, it was pretty shabby looking. It was painted white (I think they call it shabby shiek) and was screwed to a large, filthy skid. The garden department worker at Meijer told me to "make an offer" so I offered $10 and with a smile he said, "Sold." I'm sure he was happy to get rid of it.

I've never been a shabby shiek kinda gal, so this ugly arbor sat in my driveway all winter while I thought of ways to make it look nice, and then, what I could do with it. The original ideas was to repaint it white and use it as an entry to the back corner of our yard, with a short picket fence on either side of it. But, then I realized our riding mower wouldn't fit through it and I hate driving the mower around obstacles so I thought if I put it "in" the garden, it would be out of the way. So, now the challenge was how to integrate it into the garden, which at this point, was just a 24'x18' area of plowed dirt next to the shed.

During a fall 2006 visit to my client, Flexsteel, in Dubuque, I visited their town's Arboretum & Botanical Gardens and was inspired by their beautiful English Garden. Maybe you can see the similarities between my garden's layout and theirs. Instead of obelisks, I found a pyramid trellis for the back corners of the garden at a nice garden/bird website called Best Nest. Add to that the wood plant boxes hubby Bruce built, the solar-powered bird bath, cedar-stained arbor, and many plants and seeds, and that's about all it took for the ground hog to see the "open for dinner" sign.

I finished the veggie garden about the third week of May and other than losing the green beans, zucchini, cukes and egg plants to a crippled ground hog, it's doing pretty good.

Our neighbor shot the groundhog a few weeks back, but Bruce saw him in our garden feasting on the veggies and when the beast tried to run away, he was dragging his back legs. So, Bruce finished him off and put him out of misery. I've since replaced the plants he ate.