The evolution of our four-square garden

This is the first of a three-part series about our four-square garden.

Most gardens aren’t planned: they just evolve with the seasons and their owners’ growing confidence. The layout of this garden was actually planned: first it was a vegetable garden, but then we transformed it into a perennial garden, which it was for a decade.

But in the fall of 2010 we removed everything, except the hedge. Last spring, we replanted, and now the garden is in its third iteration.

Part one explains how the ideas for the garden evolved. Part two will show it as a thriving flower garden. In the last installment, I discuss the reasons for renovating the beds after 10 years, and show you the results.

Chapter 1: Four-square garden starts out as vegetable garden

This was one of the first areas of the property that we worked on.

This garden is 44 feet long and wide and began as a formally-laid out vegetable bed with four squares, bordered by four L-shaped planting areas wide enough for a hedge.

Why straight lines and squares?

Well, I love formal straight lines, but most of our property is rolling, which calls for curved lines and naturalistic plantings. However, the land at this particular spot is almost level, which made straight lines workable.

The layout was inspired by traditional potager gardens surrounded by clipped hedges, which we admired on trips to England.

As a vegetable garden, this patch yielded more edibles and cutting annuals than the two of us could manage.

Transitioning to perennials made sense. This wasn’t hard to do: after the season’s harvest was gathered and the garden cleaned up, we had a clean slate the next spring. I dug many of the perennials out of my old city garden, where my in-laws now lived, acquired others as divisions from friends, and also scooped up bargains at sales. I even grew plants from seed.

On our wish list there were two expensive components, a more permanent path — to replace the wood chips we were using — and a boxwood hedge. To spread the cost over a longer time frame, we added these over a couple of seasons.

For the path, we hired a friend in the landscape business. He had a two-man crew, and my husband pitched in, along with his university aged son.

We dug the paths to a depth of eight inches and back-filled with gravel, which was then compacted.

The path was outlined with a soldier course of large concrete pavers, and topped with limestone screenings, which were also compacted. Gravel was a much cheaper option for the paths than manufactured pavers or limestone slabs.

Boxwood shrubs (Buxus ‘Green Gem’) for the outer L-shaped edge beds came the following season. I was still freelancing as a garden designer, and so I was able to pick them up at wholesale prices, which helped a good deal, as they are expensive plants. (Prior to that, I had planted a hedge of annual fountain grass, which I grew cheaply from seed.)

Unlike other parts of the property, which are dominated by ornamental grasses and mostly late-season and native perennials, I wanted this garden to be more of a traditional flower garden — populated with old favorites such as peonies — and providing lots of color through the season. More about that in Evolution of the four-square garden: Part 2.

Tagged as: Four-square garden