Building a Dream Garden

One year ago, this spot was just grass, just a typical American lawn. But today, one year later, it is a total food paradise. Our client says this is now her favorite thing to do is hang out in this space, enjoy the garden, tend the garden, and most of all, eat from the garden. So over the next few minutes, I want to show you how we went from grass to kitchen garden to create an incredible backyard oasis to inspire you to make your own, too. It started with mapping out the space. So this yard is very long and not quite as wide. We had the hedge as our border back there, and then the home as our border on this side. Also, there's a really beautiful staircase here. So we were working with about 25 or less feet wide. And then the space itself, I think, was closer to 40, maybe even 45ft long. So I designed a formal potager garden for this space, which is essentially two Ls on this side, two Ls on that side, and then having some beds there in the center. Now, as we got to the installation, we made some tweaks, but that was mostly what the design that we were working with. So it took a few months for my client to decide she wanted to go for it. It felt like a lot of garden, especially because she'd never gardened before. So this was a new hobby for her. She was excited about it, but. Well, actually, I'll take that back. She had gardened before, but not at this scale, and so it felt a little bit overwhelming. I tried not to be too pushy, but I secretly knew that if she went for this design going all in, she'd be so much more successful than if she just started with a few beds. So we got to February and finally got an agreement to move forward. And the weather was starting to warm. So in March, we set out to create this kitchen garden. So in that very first day, we started to remove the sod. We started by, like, staking out the entire garden space, making sure we had it measured correctly. And then the guys actually brought in a sod remover to pull up the sod. So piece by piece, we got all the sod out of here, turned it into a very total muddy mess. But, hey, you got to make it worse before you can make it better. So. So we cleared all that sod in the first day and started to lay out this. The overall layout of the garden. So started to see where the edges of the beds were going to go, and we even started to put the lumber and in place. So just a few little lines to start to See, okay, here's where the first L and the second L is going to go. Moving to the next day, we had rain, rain, and more rain. So lots of delays, but really continued with the bed building. And that became really the biggest part of this whole installation was building these huge, gigantic, gorgeous raised beds. So that was really the labor in day two and day three. I think even pushing into day four was getting all these beds built. We decided midway to take out the middle bed, and our client instead wanted to put a little seating area there. She really wants this to be a place where she hangs out, eats, enjoys the garden. And so that seating area was perfect for it. So we pulled out the middle large bed and then instead just had one small on either side. Fast forward, I think, to day three or four, and that's when we brought in the soil. The soil was heavy. It was wet. It. And it was a ton of work for the guys to get the soil into these beds. But they did an incredible job so that we could get to planting. Because my goal was to plant before I had to leave town. We got the irrigation in. We did a grid system for this irrigation where everything's just laid right on top. It's a drip irrigation system. And then it was time to put in the plants. It was so fun to have Connie come arrive and plant alongside me. So we were planting for the cool season when we first put things into the garden. So we did huge plants like broccoli, cauliflower, romanesco, cabbages, kales, collards, mustard greens. We did onions. We did radishes, carrots, and peas and beets, all from seed, and then snow peas to go up and over the trellis. So that was the beginning of March, and we planted and planted and planted some more. I mean, like, hundreds of plants in these gardens. I came back a couple weeks later to make sure everything was finalized. So now here we are, fast forward, and it is July. So the garden has been in four months. Four months. It's crazy to think that this is four months ago, this was just grass. So today what we've been doing is checking out the tomatoes, the peppers. We pulled a bunch of carrots and beets and even some onions. And it's just been amazing to watch the growth of this garden and hear all the stories that our client has of all the things she's enjoyed. So. So this is a start to finish, how you can go grass to garden. It's how we did it in this space. Four months ago, we went from grass to now this oasis. And you can do this too. I know not everybody has a team to come and help them. Not everybody has me to come and help them, but we can help you here at Gardenary. So we have courses, we have so many resources and we have a free guide that you can check out right below this video. So we've always got something to help you turn your grass into a kitchen garden too. And if you love any of the things you see in this garden, like the trellises, you can also get those inside the Gardenary shop along with our seeds. So I hope this video inspires you. Tell me below what is your favorite part of this kitchen garden design and let me know if you've got any questions about how to make your own dream garden plan come to life too. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button because we've got lots more amazing transformations coming your way soon. I'll see you next time.