Tour This Large Front Yard Garden by Noble Root • Gardenary (2024)

The Noble Root Team Created an Edible Oasis for This Pacific Northwest Family

I want to showcase an incredible kitchen garden and native landscaping project by Gardenary garden consultant Nicole Spencer and her Noble Root team. Noble Root offers garden coaching, landscape design, and full-service garden installations in the Portland metro and Vancouver area.

Nicole's clients had recently moved from the suburbs to the country and were excited to have more potential growing space available. Their main goal for their garden was simple: grow more food at home. Not only did they want to plant annual fruits and veggies in a raised-bed kitchen garden, they wanted their own berry patch and a backyard orchard for perennial fruiting trees.

One last must-have on their list was a space for pollinators and wildlife. This fits right in with Noble Root's mission to turn more outdoor spaces into vibrant habitats that benefit our ecosystem.

The team definitely had their work cut out for them due to the sheer scope of this project. Let's look first at Nicole's detailed garden design.

About the Kitchen Garden Design

Noble Root had two spaces to work with: the front yard, which had a large, flat area that received full sun, and the steeply inclined backyard.

The front yard was the obvious best location for the kitchen garden. It's easily accessed through the front door of the clients' home, but because it's right out front, it needs to be as beautiful as it is productive.

Nicole used computer-aided design (CAD) to created a realistic design in full color and drawn to scale so that the family could see how the raised beds, in-ground beds, and other garden elements would fit in their space.

The focal point of this design is the raised-bed kitchen garden. This garden layout is what I call a formal potager, and it features four L-shaped raised garden beds. Nicole added two more square beds in the middle to frame a bird bath. This layout feels like an outdoor room, and Nicole really played this up by adding an arch trellis on each side to form inviting entryways to the space.

The gravel garden pathways and their sturdy square stepping stones keep the garden space accessible and mud-free on rainy PNW days.

Wrapping the raised-bed garden on two sides are in-ground beds for berries, herbs, and a Southern Magnolia tree.

Every material used in the garden space was selected to complement the home's exterior and other existing outbuildings, such as the family's greenhouse.

I'm sure these beautiful designs helped the clients imagine stepping right outside their front door and harvesting something delicious for dinner.

About the Raised Garden Beds

The raised beds were custom built out of cedar for the project. Cedar is a beautiful and durable material for raised beds.

These raised beds are home to annual vegetables and flowers. The family opted to install raised beds for several reasons. One, the height of the beds helps prevent issues caused by slugs, snails, and weeds. Two, the height also helps with drainage for plants that don't like sitting in wet soil. And three, the raised beds actually extend their overall gardening time by keeping the soil warm during cold weather. In the Pacific Northwest, the family will be able to enjoy a long growing season (up to 9 months).

Nobel Root filled the raised beds with a well-balanced soil mix.

Here a Noble Root team member measures and levels the raised beds on installation day.

About the Garden Trellises

The real stars of this garden design are the four arch trellises, one at each entrance point of the garden. There are also two obelisk trellises, one in each of the square raised beds. Between the 6 garden trellises, the family nearly doubles their total available growing space by giving their vining plants structures to climb.

These trellises were custom made for the space by Oregon artisans. Even when they're not covered in foliage, they provide structure and year-round interest in the garden.

I want to point out one more trellis in the background. It's made out of wood to blend in with the raised beds and greenhouse, and it's there to support marionberry plants.

About the Berry Patch & Landscaping

The family loves berries, so Noble Root wanted to incorporate as many perennial berry bushes into the garden space as possible. The berry patch includes marionberries, blueberries, and raspberries.

The in-ground bed at the front of the garden includes culinary herbs like rosemary, sage, thyme, and chives around the magnolia tree.

Strawberry Patch

I want to highlight one of my favorite features, which is this enclosed raised bed for strawberries. The caging has holes large enough to allow pollinators access to the strawberry flowers but small enough to keep squirrels and other larger critters out. I need this in my garden.

About the Orchard & Native Plant Space

Now let's look at the "lower garden" in the backyard. The challenge here was the steep incline. Noble Root teamed up with landscape partners so they were fully equipped to handle such a tricky job. They added large boulders to stabilize the slope and serve as a sort of natural retaining wall.

Nicole incorporated three main elements into the design for this space.

Backyard Orchard

First, there's the orchard, which features eight different types of fruit trees, including fig, cherry, apple, pear, and plum. A path with flagstone steps leads through the orchard.

Backyard Native Plant Space

Then, there's the native plant corridor, a five-tiered habitat for pollinators and wildlife. The corridor nestles up to the forest that runs along the home's property line, and includes large trees, small trees, large shrubs, small shrubs, and perennial plants and ground cover. Shrubs like early blooming red flowering currant and winter-blooming manzanita serve as important food sources for birds and pollinators. There's also California poppy and yarrow to attract beneficial insects and, of course, milkweed for the Monarch caterpillars.

Backyard Drought-Tolerant Landscaping

The last element is a steep dry slope next to the back patio. Nicole selected plants with gray tones like manzanita, lavender, and lamb's ear to match the exterior color of the house. These plants are drought tolerant so that this section of the landscape will be as low maintenance as possible.

Installation Day

Nicole's team delivered all of the plants, removed the existing grass, amended the topsoil with compost in preparation for planting, and planted every single tree, shrub, and flower...

All on an incline!

Hope You Enjoyed This Complete Garden & Landscape Transformation

I can't wait to see these garden spaces growing in and nurturing local bees, birds, butterflies, and all kinds of other critters. What I love about this design is all the clever little features, like the strawberry bed and the berry trellises. Nicole and her team really thought of everything to make this space as functional and productive as possible.

If you live in the Portland Metro area, you've got to reach out to Noble Root for your next garden and landscape project! You can read more about this project here.

Thanks for taking this garden tour with me, and I hope you're inspired to start your own front- or backyard transformation, even if you're working with a much smaller space.

Photo Credits: Noble Root

About Nicole Spencer, Founder of Noble Root

Nicole is a Gardenary-certified Consultant, Edible Garden Coach, and Licensed Landscape Contractor. She has an M.B.A . from Portland State University with a concentration in Social Innovation & Entrepreneurialism, and a B.S. in Ecology & Resource Management from Humboldt State University.

Before founding Noble Root, Nicole volunteered for Willing Workers on Organic Farms and learned about biodynamic, intensive farming practices. She's traveled the world as a botanist and has helped manage native plant restoration projects.

Nicole loves growing flowers, medicinal herbs, berries, and vegetables in her own backyard kitchen garden.