Edible Rainbow

We cook 'stew' and 'soup' - ancient words, with roots traceable in middle English, Germanic languages, Latin and Greek. The edible plants we put into our stews and soups, we grow in a 'kitchen garden' - a lengthy and inelegant phrase. The French, meanwhile, cook 'potage' and, much more neatly, grow the garlic, aubergines and the rest in a 'potager'

English, being what it is - a kleptomaniac language, with a massive vocabulary, happily absorbs a word from a foreign tongue where it doesn't have one of its own, so 'potager' became our word - especially in aristocratic houses with roots in the Norman colonisation - for the garden visible from the kitchen window, where the ingredients for the pot are grown

The chateaux of Renaissance France refined the potager into the 'potager décoratif' - a kitchen garden that is not only productive but visually pleasing. This reached it's apotheosis when Louis XIV commissioned one for the Palace of Versailles that is over nine hectares - it is still there and open to visitors

In English, the word 'potager', even without an adjective, has acquired the sense of being a vegetable garden that is laid out to be attractive and colourful - and may even include some flowers and other plants, for visual effect. Trimmed Box hedges may be used to enclose the beds and add to the appeal 

This picture is not, in fact, part of a potager - though it's hard to believe there wasn't some thought about its appearance during planting. These are rows of veg in the organic market garden from which we collect boxes for delivery. They are in the middle of the garden, away from the car park and public areas; certainly not for general display. I think they just reflect the pleasure people get from their work there, and the joy of growing things