Building a Kitchen Garden

Quick rewards are rare in the garden. Flowering perennials usually creep for several seasons before filling out, while small trees and shrubs can take up to 10 years to reach full size. But edibles? Now, that’s a group that delivers instant gratification. Sow a packet of lettuce seeds tomorrow, and you’ll have a nice little side salad within just weeks.

Having homegrown food steps from your back door is also convenient, which is why Helen Norman broke ground on her own kitchen garden seven years ago. The irony is that she lives on a farm—130 rolling acres in White Hall, Maryland—planted with field after field of certified organic vegetables. All that bounty, however, grows on land that Helen and her husband, Mark Elmore, lease to a professional farmer (her brother). It has taken nearly 27 years for the couple to shape their 1850s stone farmhouse and its ramble of outbuildings and overgrown grounds into the postcard-perfect setting they call Bright Star Farm. Not surprisingly, growing their own food got nudged off the priority