Plan & plant your kitchen garden

Part one: design your plot

Head gardener Lucy Chamberlain manages a walled kitchen garden within a 100-acre estate. Inspired by its success, she has followed the key design principles in her own, much smaller garden, to create a beautiful and highly productive fruit and vegetable plot.

To get the best from your edibles, give their positioning as much care as you do your ornamental plants. Being a head gardener with a passion for growing crops of all kinds, this was my mindset when designing my own fruit and veg plot five years ago. At a modest 12m x 12m, it’s far smaller than the walled kitchen garden I manage for my profession. But having witnessed the huge benefits of these design principles to the crops within its walls, I’ve echoed