DIY Network

A Garden's "Nerve Center"

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Not all parts of a garden are beautiful, at least not if it's a living, breathing "working" garden. Botanical gardens hide their working beds -- cold frames, nursery beds, soil mixing bins -- behind tall fences. Signs marked "Staff Only" help screen them from public view.

While most of us can't afford that luxury in our gardens at home, we still need working beds. We just have to incorporate them the best we can or tuck them out of sight behind a garage or hedge. Working beds serve as a garden's "nerve center." Ask any hands-on, dirt-under-the-nails gardener.

If I can't find my husband on our seven-acre plot, I search there first. Often that's where he'll be, transplanting small shrubs, potting up rooted cuttings, or lining out seedlings. The few square feet of ground devoted to nursery beds and cold frames is the hardest-working corner of our entire garden.

Maintenance is rigorous, and turnover is high. As new plants arrive, older plants are moved out into their permanent homes to make room. Spacing is tight in order to make the best use of the beds' special soil and finite size.

Gardeners deploy nursery beds and cold frames for multiple tasks. Here are ways we put ours to work over the course of a year:

• We purchase a lot of mail-order plants. If they're too small to be planted directly into the garden when they arrive in spring (which is usually the case), we keep them in the nursery for a while until they can hold their own.

• Small trees and shrubs go into a nursery "holding" bed in the ground.

• Herbaceous perennials are potted and sunk into the deep end of the cold frame or into a shallow trench lined with landscape timers. Squeezed pot-to-pot, they dry out more slowly here, so they're easy to water.

• With such a large garden, it's sometimes difficult to buy plants in the quantities we need to create drifts or fill beds. Flats of "plugs" -- anywhere from 24 to 72 tiny plants in a single flat -- are inexpensive and just a single growing season away from being strong enough to claim a permanent home.

• We line out hardy ferns, groundcovers and small woodland plants in raised nursery beds filled with peat-moss-enriched soil. By the time next year's flats arrive, the batch from the previous year is ready for transplanting.

• From time to time our nursery beds and cold frames hold seedlings and softwood cuttings until they're well rooted and large enough for transplanting. From here they may go to the holding bed, where we can keep a close eye on them, or they may be planted directly into the garden. Frames are also perfect for storing flats and pots of seeds that are going through a necessary chilling period.

• Colorful chrysanthemums and other seasonal flowers wait patiently in raised nursery beds for their turn to fill gaps and replace spent summer flowers in the fall perennial border. Cold frames are also handy for storing small shrubs and tender perennials over the winter. I reserve a corner of one frame for pots of bulbs that I'll put out in late February to force into early bloom indoors. One section of our large cold frame is devoted each fall to short rows of winter greens. Sown in October, lettuce and spinach seedlings grow slowly all winter under their Plexiglas cover, ready for harvest by February. Think of nursery beds as a "halfway house" for plants, a safe place to live and grow until they can get on their feet.

• Excellent soil and good drainage are essential. Improve the soil structure by incorporating plenty of compost or peat moss when the nursery beds are established. Maintain it by adding organic material each time a section is left vacant and before new seedlings take place. Automatic watering systems and drip irrigation tubes set on timers make watering easier and help ensure the survival of sensitive plants.