I Just Finished Creating My Own Dream Garden

This past summer, my family and I moved to the Nashville, Tennessee, area, and for the first time, I got to set up my own dream garden just the way I wanted.

Watch the video below to take a tour inside my garden, and keep reading to learn more about the elements I used to create my dream garden (plus some challenges I've had because even a dream garden is not perfect!).

Before we look at individual elements, here's the overall layout of my garden:

Corten Steel Raised Garden Bed Kits in My Dream Garden

I used only Corten steel raised garden bed kits that we have available in the Gardenary shop for my kitchen garden. I found this great raised bed kit supplier earlier this year, and I wanted to test out the beds myself and also showcase what all they can grow. That's why I went with a variety of raised bed sizes and types.

(Learn more about Corten steel.)

Large Raised Garden Beds

I have four of the large steel raised garden beds (4’ x 8’ x 16”), two in the front of my space and two in the back. I've already fallen in love with these raised beds. They’re so functional, they’ll last forever, and they look great with my home. They were also really easy to put together with my kids.

Small Raised Garden Beds

My four smaller steel raised garden beds are square, 40 inches on each side, and just 14 inches tall. This size bed is perfect for a beginner gardener and is deep enough to grow leafy greens and root crops. In just one of these beds, you can grow 30 pepper plants, 90 garlic bulbs, 150 carrots, or 135 lettuce plants (using my intensive planting method)!

I went back and forth whether to put these beds straight or turn them into a diamond shape. After playing around with these shapes on paper, I settled on the diamond because I wanted my kitchen garden to feel like a room in which you can't necessarily see every detail when you first enter. My research in garden design has taught me that a great garden doesn't show you everything at once so that you're inspired to step inside and have a look around. The diamond shape also avoided having to cover up a utility box.

Steel Raised Bed Containers

I added these two extra planters as an afterthought. I accidentally made the entry space into my kitchen garden too long, and I didn't like seeing all this uncovered gravel. I ordered two of the steel raised garden container kits and plan to plant them with some kind of perennial, maybe berries or asparagus or rhubarb or something else that will be in the garden full time.

Learn more about this raised bed kit and its assembly here.

Metal Garden Trellises in My Dream Garden

The obelisk trellises featured in each of my small raised beds traveled with me from my Chicago garden and are available in the Gardenary shop. They've supported climbing plants for many a season now.

The two arch trellises have traveled all the way from Houston to Chicago to Nashville. These were custom made, but I've been getting so many questions and comments about them that I've been working all year to create a shippable kit that can arrive at your doorstep in just a few strong pieces and be assembled easily (without tools). I've finally collaborated with the right people to make that happen, and these stunning arch trellises will be ready to ship in March.

Pre-order my Nicole arch trellis here. I know you will get decades of enjoyment from these trellises in your own kitchen garden.

Stepping Stones in My Dream Garden

I added little stepping stones from a hardware store to connect my front two beds and my back two beds. They're each 2ft. x 1ft., and I love them. They help to break up all the brown.

The New Bird Bath in My Dream Garden

My favorite new addition to the garden is this little concrete bird bath in the very center. I've always wanted to have a bird bath in the garden to attract more birds, and my neighborhood birds took all of about three seconds before they made themselves right at home. Birds help with pest control and benefit your overall garden ecosystem. Specifically, birds:

• hunt for slugs, caterpillars, and other garden pests
• help with pollination as they move between plants
• add much-needed air pockets into the soil as they peck and look for grubs and slugs
• eat weed seeds that might otherwise take up space in the garden
• nourish the garden with their poop

For me, I just like to watch them play in the water. Watch the birds enjoy my new bird bath in this short video.

Pollinator and Native Garden Strip

I loved the small in-ground pollinator garden at my Chicago house so much that I decided to add a pollinator garden around the whole space in Nashville. The strip is about three feet wide, and I created it by laying down the cardboard boxes that my raised beds came in and covering the cardboard with soil lasagna-style.

I filled this strip with native plants and pollinator-friendly plants, including grasses like pink muhly and flowers like bee balm and zinnias. I planted lots of herbs like germander, marigold, and anise hyssop. The idea is to make this a butterfly and bee haven, and within just a couple days from planting, this area was buzzing with life.

Challenges I've Had with My Dream Garden

Due to the insanity of the Nashville housing market in the spring of 2022, we ended up having to buy this house sight unseen to have a place for my husband, our four children, our two dogs, and me to live. Pictures gave us a pretty good idea what the inside of the house would look like, but we really didn't know much about the backyard. That has presented some problems, including the following.

Not Enough Sunlight

It turns out we have two huge trees on the side of the home, plus a massive wooded area to the south of our yard. My advice when setting up your kitchen garden is to be on the southern side of tall structures like trees. Well, for my own garden, I couldn't get on the southern side of trees no matter where I went on the lot.

The result is that I have these back two beds that are near to the wooded area and don't receive nearly as much sun as the front two beds. I primarily grow greens there since leafy greens are more forgiving of partial sun. I planted broccoli, but I'm not expecting it to do great because broccoli needs a lot of sunlight.

I am considering trimming some of the trees to get more winter sunlight.

Sloped Yard

The strip that I built my kitchen garden on slopes downward as it nears the wooded area at the back of the lot. The area that finally flattens out a bit is, of course, the shadiest part of the garden (it's also the spot that the squirrels love to hang out in the most).

Building a garden on a slope has never been an issue for me as a garden designer before since I was creating kitchen gardens in Houston, Texas, which is pretty flat. Our lot in Chicago was also flat.

To build on this slope, I used 5-inch-tall metal edging to break the garden space into three segments. The height of the edging allowed me to level the garden in three tiers with gravel.

Wildlife

We have wild turkeys, armadillos, deer, rabbits, and squirrels. It's like Bambi's hideout back here.

So far, the deer haven't been an issue, but the squirrel has decimated my pansies, celosia, beets, and Swiss chard plants. My plan is to use netting over the back two beds for now, but I will most likely need to do some kind of caging or fencing in the future.

Poor Soil

The soil mix that I ordered was very disappointing. I installed my beds in July and planted warm-season plants, but most of those failed. I've been amending my soil with compost and earthworm castings and adding as many nutrients as I can to build the soil quality. I'm getting there, but the poor soil cost me a couple of months of growing.

My Dream Garden Hasn't Always Been Dreamy

There have been many fails and things I realized I haven't done well in this garden—and I've designed and installed hundreds of gardens over my career. So hopefully that inspires you to create your own dream garden, keeping in mind that perfection does not exist and excellence might not be instantaneous.

Creating your own garden space is a process. (Watch a quick video montage of my process here.) If I've learned one thing from all the kitchen gardens I've had and all the ones I've designed for clients and students, it's that setup really matters. As long as you have raised beds in a good location, you can always fix the soil, plant again, and work through failures. Everything else is just a matter of experimenting, trying again, and learning new lessons.

If you're feeling stuck or intimidated over creating your own raised bed kitchen garden, you're not alone. Gardenary exists to give beginner gardeners a place where they can find all the resources they need to keep on growing.

• If you're a DIY'er, my book, Kitchen Garden Revival, walks you through the planning, designing, and building of your own raised-bed kitchen garden.
• If you're more an online-course-type of person, check out our popular course, Kitchen Garden Academy. Over the course of eight modules, we walk you through the complete step by step to set up and grow in your own kitchen garden.
• For maximum help setting up your own kitchen garden, find a garden consultant near you to come out to your space.

I can't wait to teach you all the lessons I'm still learning in my new dream garden space over the next seasons!