Welcome to the Largest Kitchen Garden We've Ever Designed

We designed our largest garden ever for Born to Heal Ranch and Retreat in Hempstead, Texas.

We'd like to take you on a tour of this garden and show off some of our favorite raised garden bed ideas in this incredible growing space—with pictures from the day of installation and more pictures of how it's flourishing just six months later.

Meet the Clients for This Large Garden Space: Born to Heal Ranch and Retreat

The Born to Heal Ranch and Retreat, located in Hempstead, Texas, about 50 miles outside of Houston, was founded to service women all over the country. I have to say, it's one of the most incredibly beautiful spots I've ever seen, and it was created to be a place where women can be nourished both inside and out.

Our clients, the ranch owners, are functional medicine doctors who purchased this property and moved to Texas to begin wellness retreats for women with thyroid problems. They focus on the total and wholesome healing of their guests.

And they see the garden as a central part of that.

One of the goals of the ranch was to have a large and productive kitchen garden that guests could come out and visit and harvest from whenever they wished. The owners want their visitors to experience what it's like to see local and seasonal food harvested right before their very eyes and then served on their plates—a true garden-to-table experience.

To make that happen, they required a space large enough to provide vegetables for 30 people each week during the retreats. Every facet of the raised garden bed design had to be focused on producing as much food as possible.

The result is not so much a kitchen garden as it is a kitchen garden-farm. We created over 1,000 feet of growing space!

(We can't take any credit for the cows, but they're the cutest I've ever seen!)

The Raised Garden Beds Design

This garden and its design were one year in the making, and we got to bring to life some of our favorite raised garden bed ideas. We felt so inspired by the wholesome vision for this space, and being entrusted to create such a life-giving garden was a dream come true.

Let's learn a little about the garden design elements before we take a tour of the raised garden beds layout and the edible plants growing inside.

The 4 Key Structures in Vegetable Garden Design

Every Gardenary design includes four key structures that I consider essential to any kitchen garden. As outlined in my first book, Kitchen Garden Revival, these four structures are:

• raised beds to give vegetables the perfect soil to grow in and to make tending easier on the gardener
• trellises to add vertical space to the garden and support climbing plants
• borders to separate the yard from the garden space
• pathways to provide easy access to and from the garden area

Let's start with the beautiful wood raised garden beds.

Garden Design Element #1: Raised Garden Beds Materials

Cedar Raised Beds

Cedar raised garden beds are a popular choice amongst clients, and for good reason. We prioritize raised garden bed materials that are natural, sustainable, durable, beautiful, and affordable—and cedar meets all of those requirements.

Untreated cedar helps maintain the organic environment we want for our edible plants, and while any untreated wood has a limited lifetime, cedar is an incredibly durable lumber that will perform well for decades if properly cared for. Cedar is one of the pricier woods, but it's still the least expensive option out of all of our raised bed material recommendations. That's why we opted for cedar for this garden where we'd be creating so many raised beds.

Our Rooted Garden carpenter constructed these wooden garden beds on site.

In order to prolong the lifetime of these raised garden beds, we used 2-inch-thick cedar boards to build the sides of each bed. We used 1-inch thick cedar boards to trim the corners and the top of each raised bed. This wood won't be up against wet soil for long periods of time like the wood on the sides and therefore doesn't need to be as thick to perform well.

Raised Bed Garden Soil

We fill all of our clients' raised garden beds with our ideal sandy loam soil mix. This soil blend has nurtured healthy and lush vegetation in hundreds of gardens and is a critical component of vegetable gardening success.

Raised Garden Bed Irrigation

We installed drip line irrigation throughout the entire garden as a foolproof way to water the thousands of plants growing here consistently.

(Learn more about the different ways to water a raised garden bed.)

Garden Design Element #2: Trellises

Garden trellises provide vertical interest and offer much-needed support to thriving tomato, cucumber, and bean vines. Thanks to Hempstead's warmer climate, these trellises can be covered with lush growth all four seasons of the year.

For this garden space, we added two custom metal arch trellises between the L-shaped beds. Walking underneath these massive trellises feels like you're entering a secret garden oasis, and I love their modern look.

In the surrounding beds, we added metal obelisk trellises to further increase the total available growing space. In the rear of the garden, metal panels serve as a sort-of back wall to grow up. The rectangular shapes on the panel trellis mirror the modern design of the arch trellises.

Garden Design Element #3: Garden Borders

Borders help keep the gravel material inside the garden area and deter grass and weeds from creeping into the space.

We used metal edging as the border for this large garden space.

Garden Design Element #4: Garden Walkways

Since so many visitors would enter this garden space each day, we wanted to make sure they could easily access each raised garden bed without worrying about stepping on any of the beautiful plants. Gravel is the ideal garden pathway material to prevent having to step through mud to tend or harvest from the space on rainy days. We covered the entire garden area in Salado Rose gravel.

In addition to the gravel paths, we added 24" x 24" pavers down each walkway and around the perimeter of the garden as well.

(Learn more about kitchen garden pathways.)

I want to show you what's growing right now and tell you more about this space.

Since eating from the garden was the client's main priority, we planted a wide variety of plants and enough of each plant type for a large group to enjoy regularly. (The picture below is just a fraction of the plants we added, and we also planted tons of seeds!)

10ft x 4ft x 1ft Raised Garden Beds

This garden features a total of eight cedar garden beds that are 10ft x 4ft x 1ft each, four in the front of the garden and another four in the back. The first four greet you before you even step inside the garden space.

Here's what these beds looked like freshly planted.

These long, low beds are ideal for growing loads of herbs, edible flowers, beans and peas, and leafy greens like Swiss chard, sorrel, collards, lettuce, spinach, and kale. I love this size of bed for production. At 10 feet long and 4 feet wide, they give us almost 200 square feet of space to pack in the plants.

Here's what the beds looked like after a full growing season.

We always plant herbs around the edges of raised garden beds. Herbs give you a great return on your investment because you can cut from them almost immediately and return for continuous harvests.

Since this garden will see a lot of traffic, fast-growing herbs, like the variegated sage below, will ensure there's always delicious leaves that can be harvested and enjoyed.

When we visited the ranch in the early fall, these beds had almost been taken over by vincas that were attracting butterflies to the garden space, just in time to pollinate the cherry tomatoes and pepper plants. We include flowers in all of our raised bed plans for this very reason—plus, they're gorgeous!

10ft x 4ft x 1.5ft Raised Garden Beds

There are a total of 12 raised garden beds in this space that are 10 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 1.5 feet tall.

Thanks to having the space for so many raised beds, we were able to turn one entire bed over to two types of asparagus, which will take a couple of years to produce.

While larger leafy greens like kale and Swiss chard can grow in beds that are 1 foot tall, they love the extra depth that 18 inches gives their roots.

Eighteen inches is the perfect raised bed height to give deeper-rooted plants like eggplants plenty of room to dig down.

We added obelisk trellises to some of these raised beds (the ones that received the most sunlight) to increase the total available growing space by allowing climbing plants to grow up instead of out. In the warm Texas fall, these obelisks supported Chadwick cherry tomatoes and cucumber plants.

In the fall, these 18-inch-tall beds were growing zucchini, butternut squash, honeynut squash, and spaghetti squash.

They already flourished with yardlong beans, zinnias, herbs, chives, eggplants, tomatillos, and okra during the heat of the Texas summer.

L-Shaped Raised Beds in the Formal Potager

In the middle of this kitchen garden-farm, we designed a formal potager garden layout. This space features four L-shaped garden beds that are 10 feet long on each arm, 3 feet wide, and 2 feet tall. Inside these raised beds are another four smaller square raised beds, each measuring 4ft x 4ft x 2ft.

In the picture below, you can see this raised bed layout before the central raised beds receive their corner and top trim.

The formal potager design is intended to make you feel as though you're in an outdoor room right in the heart of the garden. While there are many peaceful places throughout the property, this space to me truly puts the retreat in Born to Heal Ranch and Retreat.

Obelisk trellises in this section of the garden support cherry tomatoes, surrounded by tons of mizuna and basil.

These tall beds also host dozens of okra plants. Okra produces prolifically, so it's an ideal plant to grow for a large number of people during the hot Texas summers.

We planted several different kinds of peppers, including poblano peppers, bell peppers, jalapeños, shishitos, and Jimmy Nardello peppers. Like okra, peppers are prolific producers and so full of nutrition. Guests of the ranch can pick fruit from the plant one day and then return the next to see more forming on the plants. Even so, here's an idea of how many pepper plants it takes to feed 30 people.

When we visited the ranch in the early fall, the African blue basil, lavender, and pineapple sage had grown wild and were a total bee and butterfly magnet. Flowering herbs are so good for the overall health of a garden.

Our Team Had So Much Fun Planting This Healing Garden Space

Planting transplants and seeds in such a large space is quite the team effort! The day of installation was so much fun for us as we brought our vision of this healing garden space to life.

We can't wait to see how this garden continues to grow and nourish the women who tend it.

Looking for Your Own Garden Design with Raised Beds?

We've got lots of resources here at Gardenary to help you create a space where you can grow and flourish.

Even if you don't have the room for your own kitchen garden-farm, the design of any garden can be daunting. We have a popular online course that walks you through the steps to plan, build, plant, and tend your own raised-bed kitchen garden. If you're a DIY'er, then Kitchen Garden Academy is the perfect option to build your own space with the support of experts.

If you'd like a company like Gardenary to come out and install a turnkey kitchen garden for you, find a consultant near you.

Thanks for touring this incredible garden with me! I hope you were inspired to add more growing space in your life.