Frog Prince on his kale throne

I hesitated for two years on building my Victory Garden because I was concerned that it would stick out like a sore thumb in my neighborhood of lawns and foundation plantings. And it does. But I watched a growing outbreak of vegetable gardens the following year in my neighborhood. Several neighbors have even mimicked the three raised beds in their front yards with varying results and follow through. Everyone has an opinion to share on it. Last year, the neighborhood association (surprisingly) gave me a thank you card for my nice yard, so it appears that the neighborhood has adjusted to my Victory Garden.

The parking strip is cleared and ready.

In the spring of 2009, I tore out my hell strip plantings and put in raised beds for a vegetable garden. I stained green fir boards and we assembled the beds with deck screws. When we laid them out front, I thought that they looked like coffins. Ack!

But, the raised beds looked better once we filled them with old compost from my two year old compost heap and I added the trellises. Each bed is 3 1/2 feet wide by fifteen feet long with brick pathways placed in-between.

To answer the most common question that I receive--I found the trellises at

Bi-Mart six years ago and I paid a total of $75 for them.

I filled the raised beds with herbs, vegetables, and flowers.

The Miscreants threw the trellis tops into the road, so we reattached the tops with gorilla glue

and screws.

I momentarily panicked when the gas company cut up the road to put in a new line. But the guys placed sheets of plywood up against the garden to protect it from the dust. I almost blew kisses at them.