My cooking often starts with the same routine, I heat a little olive oil in a pan, chop an onion and some garlic and start to sauté. While the kitchen fills with a luscious aroma, I run to the garden to see what I can harvest. Cooking from the garden should be simple, inspired by the ingredients rather than a recipe, and a countertop full of bright fresh vegetables that have just been brought in from the garden has inspired some of my most memorable meals. Capturing this moment starts in the spring, when I plan my kitchen garden.

There is an important connection between the garden and the kitchen, and while many savory herbs and tender vegetables are available at farmers markets, planting a kitchen garden or potager as the French call it, is the best way to stay connected to the source - mother earth. Translated, the French word "Potage" means literally a soup pot of vegetables, yet the term "Potager" carries with it a deeper historical tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, when monks and nuns planted private gardens behind stone walls and high hedges. These ornamental gardens served as a retreat for meditation and prayer, as well as a source of vegetables, culinary and medicinal herbs, aromatics and flowers.

Planning my kitchen garden starts in the spring, with a stack of seed catalogs nearby, tagged with post-it notes, and a drawing of the four 10 X 10's squares that form my potager plot. Picturing in my minds eye, I think from the end to visualize myself in the garden as if it is already there, transforming the bare soil to an abundant patchwork quilt of greens, and garden arches filled with pole beans. 

I think of myself as a food artist, building color in the garden with a collage of lettuce blended with piquant blend of greens, dabs of red orach, fronds of chervil, and rosettes of claytonia highlight that will elevate the garden as well as a simple bowl of mixed greens to a work of art.  Seeds and plants are my paintbrush, as I combine waves of bronze tipped lettuce with swirls of crimson radicchio, spikes of blue-green kale, highlighted with accents of brilliant nasturtiums.

But it's easy to get carried away, with an appetite that is larger than the perimeters of the garden or the time I have to devote to it, so I keep my garden small. Since I can buy local tomatoes, corn and summer squash - which take up space in the garden - I prefer to grow the small, delicate greens, aromatics herbs and the frilly, soft lettuces that are at their best when picked just before serving.

My kitchen garden serves as an outdoor garden room, artistically designed with a combination of vegetables, herbs, and flowers bordered by ornamental edibles such as blueberries and other low growing fruit. Creating focal points, and a view from the inside looking out are all important design elements that enhance my pleasure. Cooking from my garden is the best way I know to create menus that reflect the changing seasons, celebrate local ingredients and build an appreciation for the magic that happens both in the garden and around the table with good food.

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