Looking back on my early days of gardening, I realize I should have invested more in the infrastructure. In my early twenties I was renting and moving from place to place, so investing in infrastructure wasn’t very practical. But once I moved to a house of my own and put in my own garden, I should have let myself invest a little more money in things that would have made my garden much more productive and efficient and would have, at the start, allowed me to focus on actually growing and harvesting rather than rigging temporary structures that wouldn’t last or serve their purpose.

DIY Garden Design

If you’re planning a garden or ready to invest in updating an existing garden space, consider these tips that will make your investment so much heftier and long-lasting and will allow you to get the most enjoyment out of growing your herbs and vegetables.

Here are some infrastructure ideas:

Garden Mulch

Mulch in the garden is a priority. You’ll want to mulch both the pathways for walking and the beds to keep down weeds. This is key for both herb beds and vegetable beds. When I was younger I was very frugal and my favorite method of mulching was putting a bag on the lawn mower and collecting grass when I mowed the lawn (often with my toddler in a backpack on my back!). Grass works well and is a perfectly valid and frugal way to mulch your beds. But if you can afford to purchase some bales of straw (not hay, which is full of seeds) or you can harvest seagrass, wood chips or some other mulch, please do so. It’s a good idea also to purchase a cloth groundcover and lay down two layers in your walking paths and put the mulch over the top. You’ll need to replace the ground cover in 3-4 years and replace the mulch regularly too. If you include this as a necessary expense that will pay for itself many times over, it will save you a lot of work and frustration.

DIY Fences and Working Gates

If you live where deer roam freely, or near pastures with cows or goats that can escape, you’ll recognize the value of a strong, high fence. In my early days I tapped light little poles into the ground and affixed three-foot-high fencing with the little twist ties that you wrap around a loaf of bread. Needless to say, the fences fell, the poles leaned over, and the veggies and herbs I had so tenderly tended were munched happily by the local deer. Borrow a friend’s post-hole digger and invest some time in creating a strong backbone for your fence, and install six-foot high fencing. Also install gates—at least one, preferably two—and don’t use my old method of simply leaning an old gate or door against the fence post. Use a level and make sure the post is straight and vertical, and install hinges so the gate swings freely. Also use a drill or screwdriver to install a lock, or if you’re handy, create a wooden lock-and-pin system to keep the gate closed. It’s ideal if your hinge is one of those nifty hinges with a spring that will automatically close the gate for you; I’ve woken up many nights realizing I didn’t close the gate behind me and knowing it is an open invitation for deer.

Watering System

If you can, install a sprinkler or watering system. This isn’t quite so important for herbs, especially Mediterranean herbs, but it’s very important for vegetables. Take the time to get your hoses and a sprinkler that suits you and position it so that it waters what you need watered. Also make sure the on/off switch is easy to access—preferably at the house so you don’t have to enter a wet garden to turn it off.

Chairs/Benches In the Garden

I’ve found that it’s lovely to sit in the middle of my sweet little garden, in a chair, and just enjoy it. A small bench or chair can be a welcome relief after bending or kneeling, and it invites someone else to spend time with you while you weed. It’s also very easy to take a small plank of wood and position it in a corner of a bed to make a quick, low seat. I also like the idea of placing two small chairs with a little table between them somewhere in the garden; why not sip your rose petal, lemon balm, or holy basil iced tea while you’re sitting next to your roses, lemon balm and holy basil? There’s something charming about creating a living space for people within a living space for plants.

Raised Bed Gardening

There are pros and cons to raised beds; I’ve done it both ways and I enjoy them both. I like that raised beds offer clear delineations about what’s growing where. They add an element of organization to what could otherwise be a wild and rampant garden (which is what most of my gardens end up becoming), and they give a sense of order, which is nice especially in the early part of the season when you are putting seeds and seedlings out. Raised beds, though, can be too big—their width can seem reasonable at first but later feel too wide, and you discover you can’t comfortably reach all half-way across. I’ve also found that, because raised beds can be filled with more soil, I am tempted to plant more plants in them, but at the end of the summer I face a jungle of plants that seem over-burdened and that are spilling out into the paths, creating obstacles. And when the raised bed boards begin to rot after a few years, they’ll need replacing. Regular beds (mounded beds without sides or railings) are great, too: they offer ease of access and can be as narrow or as wide as you want, though the pathways can merge with the beds and lose their boundaries. Regardless whether you create raised beds with railings or sides or simply mounds of dirt, I recommend building a narrow bed up against the inside of your fence and using the fence as the boundary, rather than having a walking path along the inside of the fence. You’ll need to be vigilant about weeding the exterior of the fence (outside the garden), but I’ve found this to be a great use of space and you can use the fence as a structure upon which you can grow climbing things such as hops, cucumbers, gourds, and beans.

Greenhouses

I have to admit, I’ve often experienced greenhouse envy, wishing I had in my backyard that eccentric, colorful or glassy greenhouse I see in someone else’s yard. Greenhouses have a way of capturing our imaginations, inviting us to dwell in a space of warmth and sun; they have a way of making you look upward at the shapes of the ceiling, much like a cathedral draws the eye up. Greenhouses are magical spaces in the depths of winter, cushioning orchids or rare flowers or lime and lemon trees, warming trays of seeds, or even just serving as a calm place out of the weather to store coiled up hoses and trowels.

Excerpted/adapted from Llewellyn’s Little Book of Herbs by Holly Bellebuono