To get a vegetable garden started at home or at work, email or call us at 503.684.3980.

It's packed with seasonal gardening tips, recipes, links and a list of what to plant and harvest.

Frequently asked questions

What is a culinary garden?

Verdura Culinary Gardens are compact and intensively planted, making it easy to grow healthy crops of vegetables. The basic garden is a self-contained raised bed framed with natural Douglas fir lumber. Other garden designs are available, including our gorgeous Mayan Pyramid garden frame. All frames can also be made with cedar, and all are available as containers for growing on decks or patios.

• Because the gardens are self-contained, complete with their own soil mix plus weed barriers, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have good soil on your property.
• Planting Verdura vegetable gardens require no backbreaking tilling, digging, or weeding.
• Weeds and pests are easily controlled with natural materials and methods.
• Our vegetable garden planting plans maximize companion planting and crop rotation techniques, increasing the overall health of the garden.
• Best of all, if you're interested, we'll teach you and your children to garden as we work together to plant, maintain, and harvest your new garden.

Do I need a lot of space with good soil?

No, you don’t! Verdura Culinary Gardens are compact (as small as 4' square) and very productive. We even have patio versions, which can flourish on decks, courtyards, around pools, and on porches. They’re perfect for yards with limited space. We provide soil ideally suited to raised bed gardening.

What you do need is sunlight. A healthy vegetable garden requires a minimum of six hours of direct light a day. If you have a sunny spot on your property, whether it’s in your front yard, back yard, or along the side of your house, you’re an excellent candidate for a Verdura Culinary Garden.

How large a garden does my family need?

Verdura Culinary Gardens are intensively planted, taking up little space and providing surprisingly large crops of organic vegetables. A 4' square frame or container can provide 64 heads of lettuce or more than 40 pounds of heirloom tomatoes! Of course, we tend to plant a more diverse mix of vegetables than that, but you get the idea.

How large a garden you need depends upon the size of your family as well as what you’d like to grow. Do you want herbs? Just salad greens? Or are you aiming to grow as many of your own organic vegetables as possible? Do you plan to freeze or can some of your produce for the winter months or for gifts? Generally speaking, a residential 4' x 10' garden frame will provide a nice supply of vegetables for a typical adult nearly year-round. Two of these frames typically produce around 375 pounds of food annually.

When we visit with you to do your site assessment, we’ll discuss your needs and budget and then create a vegetable garden plan tailored to your needs and budget.

How much will it cost?

For about the same cost as buying a season’s worth of produce at the farmer’s market, you can grow your own organic vegetables at home. Actual costs the first year depend upon your garden design and size, of course. Your garden is built to last many years.

Contact us to request a site assessment and a free estimate. Filling out a Home Garden Survey will help answer some of the questions we’ll have to be able to give you an estimate.

Once your beds are set up, our Garden Grow program ensures your continued success by helping you maintain your garden from March through October, leaving it tidied up and planted with plants to over-winter. You can opt for visits every one, two or three weeks, and can participate as much or as little as you like. Each visit costs about the same as having your lawn mowed, and includes all plants and seeds, soil amendments, irrigation system fine-tuning, weeding and replanting. The best part is we'll teach you to garden for no additional cost! We include hands-on, private garden coaching for all participants as part of the Garden Grow program.

What are the payment terms?

For residential gardens, once you choose your garden size and style, we ask for a deposit of 50% of the fee for setup and design. The balance will be due upon completion of your new garden. Maintenance is billed at the end of each month via an emailed invoice. We accept personal checks, or you can pay with credit cards or your bank account using PayPal.

Why do you use PayPal?

PayPal is an online e-commerce provider that is ideally suited for small businesses, online merchants, individuals and others currently under-served by traditional banks and other payment mechanisms. PayPal is perhaps best known as the e-commerce solution used by eBay and now has almost 90 million accounts worldwide.

Many people are hesitant to provide credit card information over the Internet. PayPal provides a secure server (SSL) so your transaction is safe but moreover, when you make a payment, you have additional security because only PayPal is provided with your credit card information.

Using PayPal allows us to keep all financial transactions secure, while at the same time keeping our costs down.