An Inspired Ornamental Vegetable Garden at Secret Garden Growers Nursery in Canby, OR

Like all good things I create, there’s always a complicated backstory. I joke about a recessive Sicilian need for baroque design in everything—but there’s a reason for that. It’s a need to hide the emotion and calculation behind the many ornate details. It’s about creating an unfolding drama—with so much love at its center.

And these experiences I create always involve food. My desire to give myself and others sensual visual and oral, ok, or gustatory pleasure. There. I said it. I blush just writing that. But in the last year I’ve truly come to embrace how much more passionate I am about growing food.

Yes, I enjoy it a lot more than ornamental gardening.

I think for me it’s simply all about the crescendo of summer, the slowdown into fall, the seed catalogs and sowings of winter, and the marathon of spring. Each year, the garden is different. It feels a bit like fashion too. Always the same things, but slightly different.

So let’s take a brief look at how this all unfolded in the last year…

First and foremost, it began as a bit of playful fun with friends. “Play” is also always at the heart of my creative process. I love to communicate, and have conversations with others, so I play well alone, but I need friends to collaborate with or else I don’t have fun.

So, this last winter, during winter term, I travelled to Philadelphia to volunteer at the Philadelphia Flower Show, and to see some of my friends. Jason, Theo, and LaManda even flew over there too for the experience. It was amazing!

So, two of my inspirations last winter were friends there whom both work at important public gardens in Pennsylvania: Longwood and Chanticleer. Karl and Eric could not be more different, but they’re both passionate about plants and I adore them both. In some way, I had to take the experience of that visit, and build upon it. All I could think about being able to afford here, was a vegetable garden planting.

Karl Gercens (on the far left in the photo below) loves for his conservatory plantings at Longwood to be pretty. He’s known for garden travel and has truly seen “a whole wide world of plants”. So I asked him for his favorite “edimental” and he tossed out a perennial kale. I found kosmic kale locally, then went a bit nuts with it.

Eric Hsu (on the far right in the photo below) is a foodie bestie of mine. Like me, he uses food and cooking to relax. We both enjoy reading about the histories of cultivars and food in general—and trying new-to-us varieties. I wanted to expand on that area of our friendship.

I didn’t pick a particular plant for him in the planting this year. But since he works at Chanticleer, a garden I see incessantly on social media, I wanted to raise the bar. I challenged myself to make it look at least decently enough for him on IG since he’s made me laugh a lot during this whole process. It’s nice to know someone else who loves produce as much as I do. Being given the role to lead this project at work as not been easy for me and I appreciate the support and questions from afar. Thank you Eric.

The 75′ x 50′ fenced space at SGG (about 3750 ft²) has been there for years. Each year Pat has been able to get some veggies planted. But the entire space had not yet been filled in as stunningly as the many planted beds around the property. We often talked about how it could be sooooo amazing, but knew it would be a lot of work.

I didn’t have extra time or energy to do it alone. During the pandemic I’d grown thousands of veggie starts as home. I’ve had a community garden plot nearby for over a decade in town. Taking that space at work on wasn’t something I’d really thought about while I was still so ill too.

Then I decided to leave my former job to start the AAS Horticulture program at Clackamas Community College. In addition to greenhouse growing, we often helped at the organic farm space on campus. And some of my classmates were in the farming program so I’ve learned alongside them. For our annual sale we seeded some vegetables, and we helped to sow peas in the hoop house. At work, I talked about wanting to get a larger plot at the community garden located at school. I started to dream about fully indulging in the creation of a more formal and ornamental design.

As a professional horticulturist, I wanted to better show my skills. It’s funny how sometimes I feel like others think I’m a screwball nitwit but I’m just going to state, I will never give that up no matter how professional I become lol.

So that was the moment when Pat asked me if I’d like to spearhead this idea of mine in her space at work. I think I jumped at the idea and knew I’d drag my friends at work into it with me. With Pat as the client, it was easy to get a list of what she wanted. Then I took that list and added a plan for the ornamental “bones”. I knew she wanted not just a food garden, but an ornamental space, and I knew that Evan, Susan, and I were up for this.

My classes really did serve as inspiration. This is an aspect not everyone will understand since they weren’t there with me. Many of the plants I plugged in were from my Organic Gardening course, and they were chosen by classmates as part of our curriculum. It was in that class too that I came to better understand just how much I already knew about growing food.

The theme we at work really latched onto though, was for the garden to be planted in such a way as to encourage as many beneficial insects as possible to come in to help us to control pests. We did the best that we could, but I know we could do more in the next year. (More on that later since we’re still in the process and have work to do to improve plantings even more.)

At work too we started to have conversations about ornamental edibles. Which kinds of food did we find the most attractive and delicious? Or, what were we curios to try? Pat’s own dark purple mustard she’s let grow wild on site served as a bit of a mascot for our efforts. (It originally came home from a trip to Asia where a monk had given her seeds of it at a monastery.)

Once I’d consulted with Pat, made a list of the bones I wanted to keep the garden cohesive, l consulted with Evan and Susan and we expanded what we’d have… To be honest, this is still happening too as we continue to sow for fall now.

Bones included Amaranthus ‘Hot Biscuits’, rows of columnar and boxwood basils, tennis ball lettuce, Tropaeolum ‘Alaska’, a variegated tomato, a variegated pepper, old sunflowers Pat had wanted to grow lots of the year before, and cleome. Evan and Susan added so many other great things: eggplants, peppers, beans, melons, greens, ground cherries—and I know I’m missing more. I kept my additions to my basic favorites that I can eat without having allergic or mast cell reactions: dill, thyme, parsley, squash, kale, chard, and celeriac.

We grew almost everything from seed in the greenhouse. Just a handful of things were purchased in packs, and anything I added from school was started from seed too. That made a huge difference in terms of cost, but we did use some paid time for this, although we tried to volunteer time as much as possible. That busy time of year also disallowed us from starting so much more, but we certainly learned how to do it.

Some seed packets we used were from free packets we’d received at the NWFGF in our swag bags, and some came from old packets I had at home. The beautiful marigold below had been a gift to Pat from the garden of Nancy Heckler up in WA. We shopped and order too as quickly as we found things to trial.

We really had to start from bare bones, but we filled in the space pretty well during the chaos of the growing season this summer. We did what we were able to do on the days that we had extra time and energy. Susan helped to add more trellising and arches that Pat had long wanted.

All of this was not easy, but neither is a Broadway show or any other garden or art installation. I’m still frustrated with the weeds, but we hope to have that better under control in time. (More straw is on its way!!) I have a garden apprentice too and she should be showing up here soon too.

So, this is just a start to reporting from this garden.

I’ll end this post with one more photo collage. There’s just too much to say about the community behind this effort. We chose so many wonderful plants for this project, and had such engaging and informative conversations. I’m proud of all of us. (Thank you Cody for helping me to harvest quickly after work. Y’all can see Cody below. He’s a classmate AND coworker this summer as he completes CWE credits with us.)

My inspiration truly was the love and support of my vast network of colleagues, friends, and family. We all hold catalogs of food memories, but mine deeply inform my compulsion to grow food. Thank you Pat for letting me explode this interest of mine a bit out into the world. As a horticulturist, this project has helped me to publicly embrace my skills, and I know now that if I move, I will need a huge space like this to call my own. The real inspiration though for this was my life this last school year, and those who taught me new things, those who let me teach them things, and those who’ve supported me as a professional, and whom are part of my big plant-filled network.

S.W.A.K to all of you too for reading this post and let me know what YOUR favorite edimental is too! (Heck, I’ll take a list of your favorite veggies too.)