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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Potager gardens feed the senses and the appetite
  • Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:49:02 -0600


Potager gardens feed the senses and the appetite
By Colleen Smith
Special to The Denver Post
Posted: 06/12/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT
http://www.denverpost.com/lifestyles/ci_12563725

Potager gardens are a feast for the eyes, as well as the palate,
nourishment for the body, the spirit and the planet.

The word "potager" — PO-tah-zjay — comes from the French word "potage,"
which means soup. In gardener's parlance, a potager, then, is an artful
stew of edible and ornamental plants.

Appropriately, Denver chef-owner Teri Rippeto cultivates a potager at her
Capitol Hill eatery with the same name. In the tiny courtyard and in the
alley behind Potager, Rippeto grows fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers.

Rippeto prepares her menus using only locally grown, seasonal, organic
foods. Rippeto's delicious discipline has not gone unrewarded by Denver
diners: Potager, 1209 Ogden St., just celebrated its 12th anniversary.

Rippeto does business with a network of Colorado farmers, but she also
grows her own: rhubarb in troughs, raspberries in a raised bed, herbs in
whiskey barrels, and a variety of veggies thriving both in her restaurant
garden and her plot at home.

Rippeto, raised in a small farm town in Missouri, picked up a hand trowel
and loosened the soil in one of her raised beds. Gently, she pulled up a
couple of radishes.

"Growing food is such a reward. You gain an appreciation of food and learn
to honor it," Rippeto said. "The moment you pick the tomato you grew and
eat it, that becomes a celebration: You're honoring something so natural,
and celebrating life in its simplest form. And you don't waste it."

Rippeto insists upon knowing where her food comes from. On a table near the
entrance to Potager, she keeps a well-thumbed coffee-table book titled
"Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture."

"My belief is that even if you don't consider yourself a gardener, if you
have a piece of land — even a little square of yard or lawn — you
should be growing some food. That's what I believe our community needs to
move toward. If you can't eat everything you grow, share it with friends,
neighbors

A variety of greens grown in a backyard space can provide an assortment of
flavors for a fresh summer salad. (Dana Coffield, The Denver Post)
or donate a box of vegetables to a soup kitchen."

Laurie Jekel, owner of The Last Detail, a Denver landscape design and build
firm, profoundly appreciates the aesthetic appeal of fruits, vegetables and
herbs. She cultivates crops ranging from arugula to zucchini, and she
advocates not only for their nutritional value but their artful appearance.

"Red cabbage is a beautiful ruby, like a pomegranate red; and when grown in
a garden, it adds such great color until fall. When the sun hits it, it's
hot pink," she says. "And bibb lettuce is lime green, a great color."

"I love to see broccoli. Not many people realize what an exotic plant the
artichoke is, or Brussels sprouts — an amazing plant. Asparagus has a
fabulous fern. Potatoes
Oregano grows in a container in a potager. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver
Post)
of every variety make a little shrub that flowers. Potatoes here in Denver
are great because you can leave them all winter and just dig some up when
you want them."

Jekel credits the success of her high-yield potagers to composted soil
cultivated weekly. During a telephone interview, Jekel made her way around
her own potager, cutting ingredients for a supper salad.

"All the different lettuces are fun. They look so European. I have spinach
and scallions and green onions. Celery smells great in a garden. And later,
lemon cucumbers, I love to see the yellow lying around the garden, they add
a great snap of color."

Jekel's potagers incorporate culinary herbs.

"I plant lemon thyme so you can brush up against it and smell it. Dill is a
beautiful, airy plant. I use peppermint and spearmint, but also orange
mint, ginger mint, chocolate mint, lemon mint," she says. "Variegated sages
are pretty. Parsley is curly and adds a whole different texture and a
different green. Chives have that great little round purple flower.
Lavender is so great, and people are using it for so many things now."

For Jekel, the ideal potager engages all five senses. "That should be true
for any garden, but especially for potagers. You want a potager to look
good, smell good, feel good, taste good. You want to be able to hear the
birds and the bees."

To keep potagers looking good, Jekel adds annuals and perennials: cheery
snapdragons, bee balm, dramatic Joe Pye weed, foxgloves, a hydrangea tree,
roses, hellebores.

"And you always want to have some stargazer lilies, so that when you're out
in your potager picking and cutting for cooking, you can remember, 'Oh, I
can have a bouquet too.' "

Jekel also plants potagers with nasturtiums, their edible leaves and
blossoms bridging the gap between flower and food.

Another preferred potager plant is rhubarb: "Rhubarb is gorgeous for its
leaf and burgundy stem. I use them in floral arrangements, and I just found
a great recipe for a summer drink with rhubarb and vodka," Jekel said.
"Rhubarb is a great smell. It reminds you of summer when you were a kid."

In fact, nostalgia, Jekel believes, is a cornerstone in the potager.

"Potagers are what we remember from our grandma's gardens. You see rhubarb
and remember your grandma made rhubarb pie. Or how you dipped your rhubarb
in a Dixie cup of sugar. Potagers are not just about eating, but about
bringing back childhood memories."

Even in the digital age, kids continue to make memories in a potager. Jekel
related an anecdote about a client's kitchen garden.

Not only did the client's son eagerly eat his fresh vegetables at meals, he
also visited the potager to help himself — a habit the client learned of
only when she went out to harvest broccoli for a dinner party, but found
none.

She might have blamed the rabbits, except near the verdant vegetable plants
her son had left behind a piece of telltale evidence: a cup with the
remains of ranch dressing.






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