Designing Hardscapes for Your Garden

David Epstein: Hi, I’m David Epstein. This is Growing Wisdom. I’m here with Kristin Desouza at Garden in the Wood. And we’re going to talk about some hardscape in the edible garden today. You know I have tomato stakes, that’s a piece of hardscape but you can add some pretty elaborate stuff going on here.

Kristin Desouza: Uh-huh.

David Epstein: Tell me about some of the elements you’re using.

Kristin Desouza: So we’re standing under this arbor that has grapes growing of it and this was created by a local craftsman named Frank Hann.

David Epstein: Now, when I look at this, I think, “Well, how long is this going to last? That’s sticks.” -- and you know in mind.

Kristin Desouza: I’ve been told by the craftsman that will out lived my lifetime. It’s a really strong wood, similar to red cedar. White cedars are also strong and the black locust can really contend with them too.

David Epstein: And what do you have growing up here?

Kristin Desouza: These are grapes of different species. I have River and Concord grape. The thoughts are that they’ll grow up the trellis and then we can harvest down here when they’re fruiting. I’d like to show you a couple of other elements of hardscapes that we have in the garden.

David Epstein: Great.

Kristin Desouza: Here we have the permaculture design element. This is called the keyhole design. What this allows is access into the garden bed and limiting compaction and that way you can harvest, you can put your basket down and start picking some of your fruits. So here we’ve couple ledged it to really add different types of material. We put wood chip and then we have our leaf mulch. And another structure that we have in the garden is this rustic fence. This is also black locust, so it matches our design.

David Epstein: Give you a nice border.

Kristin Desouza: Definitely adds a nice border, also a nice extension of the wall too, provides a little bit more structure for some of the current, we can twine them around and twine them on the fence.

David Epstein: Kristin, thank you. You certainly got in my wheels turning on some ideas that may bring into my own garden.

Kristin Desouza: Well, thank you for stopping by.

David Epstein: Always a pleasure. We hope you enjoyed this edition of Growing Wisdom. Come back every week for all of our tips, hints, and helps.