LITMIR.BIZ

      Chayote, white onions, tomatoes, and chilis are the basis for many a great Mexican meal.

      creasy mexican gardens

      For three decades, I have been an active vegetable gardener, much of it professionally. In the first decade, I mastered the basics like sweet corn, tomatoes, snap beans and was ready for something more exotic. Inspired by my travels, I decided to try growing ethnic vegetables of all types; from Mexican amaranths and Italian radicchios to Asian pac chois, tucking them in among their more prosaic cousins. Eventually, armed with all my new knowledge. I started a large garden cookbook and decided to grow a number of ethnic theme gardens for the book, including a Mexican one. I needed to grow out many unusual vegetables and herbs to develop my recipes. Also, I wanted to see how prototypical ethnic gardens went together and how well they fit into a standard American garden.

      My first Mexican garden was planted in the corner of my backyard nearly fifteen years ago. It included all sorts of vegetables and herbs I had never seen before, much less grown, including epazote, huauzontlí, grain amaranths, and wild chiles, plus numerous unusual varieties of familiar vegetables, including grinding corns, tomatoes, peppers, lima beans, and sunflowers and pumpkins, for their seeds.

      I not only wanted the vegetables to be Mexican but, as a landscape designer and photographer, I wanted the garden to give the feel of Mexican home gardens I knew. The ones I was familiar with were filled with exuberance, joy, and colorful flowers—and, in most of Mexico, planted in layers, with vegetables, herbs, and flowers among and under fruiting and flowering trees.

      With these design goals in mind, I added a number of flowers I associate with Mexico, namely, tithonia (also called Mexican sunflower), Mexican sage (Salvia leucantha) and two south-of-the-border favorites, marigolds and nasturtiums. Because Mexican peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos need a long growing season, I seeded them in the house under lights, starting with the peppers in February. A month later, I started the tomatoes, and a few weeks after that, the tomatillos. Once they became mature enough, I moved them outside to my cold frame.

      I must say, I mastered the exuberance component! The garden spilled out of its boundaries, thanks in part to my great organic soil, which caused the corn to grow to 14 feet, the amaranths to tower over the tomatoes, and the tomatillos to sprawl over everything. The joy was evident, too; it was so much fun to explore a whole new garden culture and cuisine. Tacos, refried beans, and hominy from red dent corn was great fun. The bright colors, though, were definitely missing. Even with the addition of impatiens and gloriosa daisies at midsummer, I thought the garden still a bit too pale.

      A few years later, I set out to grow another Mexican garden, this time with lots of color! And I really went for it this time. I filled up the whole front yard. Bougainvilleas, dahlias, cannas, morning glories, marigolds, nasturtiums, and zinnias were sprinkled among the vegetable beds and along the front path. For a little more oomph, I had a trellis painted with primary colors and topped with a sun face created by my artist friend, Marcy Hawthorne.

      North American gardeners need to start a number of Mexican specialties from seeds in order to get a jump on the season. Appendix A gives specific information for starting seeds inside. I use a cold frame as intermediate housing for my tomatillos, jícama, chilis, tomatoes, and Mexican herbs I’ve started inside.

      As the weather warms, I gradually leave the lid open longer. About fifteen years ago, I planted my first Mexican garden and filled it with corn, pumpkins, tomatillos, lima beans, and sunflowers It was a greatly productive garden—but didn’t have enough color for my taste.

      Well, let me tell you, it worked. This garden stopped joggers in their tracks. Here among the suburban lawns and polite evergreens was an in-your-face-garden so filled with color and flowers you could hardly see all the veggies. I’d found the formula!

      Since that time, I’ve created numerous Mexican gardens, including two minigardens I filled with Mexican herbs and chiles in colorful containers and a large front garden of big running squash and bush beans with a front border filled with sunflowers, scarlet runner beans, amaranths, and giant Mexican corn. This garden featured all plants from the New World and it was sensational.

      A few years after my first Mexican garden, I planned one for the front yard. This time I put in a bright-colored arbor and added lots of bright flowers like dahlias, sunflowers, marigolds, nasturtiums, and cannas. The large beds were filled with chilis, corn, pumpkins, squash, and tomatoes as well as epazote, Mexican tarragon, and Mexican oregano. This iteration was so splashy it stopped traffic!

      My last Mexican garden was enclosed by a stucco wall and included a small patio of random paving stones interlaced with broken blue tiles. It was planted early, as soon as the weather warmed up in early April, with the tomatillo ‘Toma Verde,’ some Mexican chiles—poblano, jalapeño, serrano, ‘Habañero,’ ‘Mulato,’ and ‘Chili de Arbol’—and ‘Beefsteak’ and ‘Costoluco Genovese’ tomatoes, all of which we had started from seeds and hardened off in the cold frame. We filled some of the room between the plants with ‘Iceberg’ lettuce and cilantro, knowing these would be long gone before the other plants filled out. Unfortunately, the weather got unusually cold; in fact, we had a record-cold April and May and needed to put red plastic mulch down around the tomatoes and chiles to keep them going. We delayed more planting as well. Consequently, the ‘Golden Bantam’ corn, ‘Peruano’ dry beans, chayote, jícama, watermelon, ‘Grey Zucchini,’ and grain amaranth, all of which need very warm conditions, didn’t go in until early June. The warmth also brought on the purslane (pigweed), which we usually pull out right away. This time, though, we let it grow and fill out until it was big enough to harvest. What a revelation. I’d been pulling it out for years. It tasted so good in some of our recipes I’m sure I will keep some of it around indefinitely.

      A harvest from one of my latest Mexican garden includes white onions, lima beans, tomatoes, chard, corn, beans, and lots of chilis.

      My most recent Mexican garden has many containers filled with Mexican herbs and chilis. The corn and watermelons fill the back beds; tomatoes and peppers in the middle and driveway beds. Jicama rambles over the low front fence and a chayote wanders around behind the corn.

      To fill out the garden, I sent away for Mexican specialties, including epazote, Mexican tarragon, cumin, huauzontlí, and chía, and grew most of them in containers. For bright colors, I planted lots of zinnias, petunias, and marigolds in cheery containers. I especially liked the hot pink and orange plastic buckets I had purchased in the Tijuana produce market.

      I’m sure I will continue to create new Mexican gardens for years to come. They are so cheerful and exuberant, the neighbors love to look at them, and eating their bounty is one of our favorite family feasts.

      [Flowers in the Mexican Garden]

      Flowers are integral to a Mexican garden and while they add lots of life and color, as an added benefit they attract hundreds of beneficial insects to help protect against pests. When I started growing Mexican-style gardens I put in too few flowers and the gardens never looked quite right, now I include many. I don’t always stick to flowers from Mexico, using plants like gomphrena and impatiens, but I find that the varieties from that part of the world look the most at home.

      Many of our most popular flowers originated in Mexico including: marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums, morning glories, cosmos, tithonias, sunflowers, verbenas, and many different sages. Bougainvillea and cannas are two other plants, native to tropical South America, that look

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