Why I Love Intensive Planting
I primarily use the Gardenary style of intensive planting for my own garden and client gardens. It’s my favorite method because it leaves little space to waste, looks beautiful, aligns with my garden goals, and produces really well.
Here are just a few of the benefits and reasons why I love this planting method so much.
Planting for Your Garden Goals
Have you stopped to think about why you garden? Or did you just know you wanted to garden and dive right in? There’s no wrong answer! What I really love about the Gardenary style of intensive planting is it aligns well with the most common gardening goals.
Production: You can pack a ton of production into a small space. I think everyone deserves to have a garden no matter how small their yard, patio, or deck. Intensive planting in raised beds allows you to make the most of that space.
Beauty: With so many plants interplanted and succession planted, a bare space in the garden never goes to waste and the result is beautiful and colorful year round. This method of planting proves that kitchen gardens should be an enhancement to your property, not an eye sore.
Experience: When you intensively plant a raised bed, it leaves no room for weeds. Rather than weeding, you’re spending most of your time picking and pruning. You can also experience a huge variety of plants, by consistently tucking in new seasonal plants as the year goes on. The raised beds are ideal for involving kids and providing accessibility.
Sustainability: The Gardenary method of intensive planting creates an ecosystem that invites in natural predators and pollinators. It uses companion planting and trap crops to deter pests. Little, if any, organic pest control is required. Chemical herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers aren’t needed. This creates healthy soil and fosters regenerative gardening practices.
Is Intensive Planting Right for Your Garden?
Intensive planting can benefit a variety of garden applications (kitchen gardens, rain gardens, native meadows), and there are different intensive planting methods out there. Here I am specifically talking about the application for raised bed kitchen gardens.
Intensive planting might be right for your garden if:
You want to make a regular habit of getting out in your garden. Just 5 minutes of tending a day or one weekly session is enough!
You can’t wait to use your garden harvests. Intensively planted gardens produce a lot. Consistent pruning and harvesting increases that production and also ensures plants aren’t getting crowded.
You aren’t afraid to prioritize. If things ever do get crowded, you’ll need to decide which plants to prune or pull out.
You’re sick of empty spots in the garden. Intensive planting maximizes all the available space, and as plants grow in they create a canopy over the soil that reduces evaporation and protects the soil health. It mimics nature and looks more beautiful (if you ask me).
You want to attract more pollinators to your garden. Intensive planting uses companion plants, including (annual and native) flowers, to support a healthy ecosystem, act as trap crops, and defend your harvest from pests. As a result, they also attract the good butterflies and bugs that pollinate your plants and increase your harvest.
You want to try a new way of gardening. Traditional gardening is reactive. With intensive planting, you’ll check on all the things regularly and stay on the offense against pests and disease by doing garden tasking like pruning and hand raking dead leaves off the soil.
You’re excited to grow a variety of plants. You can fit so much in your garden this way. Not everything will work, but you get to try growing so many vegetables, herbs, and flowers each season.
You don’t mind breaking the rules. Intensive planting breaks all the traditional plant spacing rules and some people might love to tell you as much.
Timing is one of the keys to garden success.
You may know our frost dates, but did you know we have three growing seasons in the DMV? Download this guide to our local growing seasons so you can save time and money by planting the right plants at the right time.
