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Create a Keyhole Garden
Keyhole gardens are a mix between square-foot gardening and herb spirals, blending the best of both practices to create something far more practical. In a word, the keyhole garden could be distilled down to 'accessibility'. It allows gardeners to access their garden bed from within a small radius located in the centre of the plot.
Square-foot gardening has as its premise the ability to carve up garden plots into...well...square feet. This can be done on an individual square-foot size thereby forcing the gardener to navigate the perimeter of each bed. The alternative method is to mark beds into square-foot dimensions of the whole which means gardeners need to bend down to cultivate, tend or harvest their plots.
So, while square-foot gardening has come a long way in reducing the amount of effort required to tend our garden beds it falls short of keyhole gardens by a long shot.
A keyhole garden offers as its main advantages the ability to tend your beds from the one position. You literally work from within the bed and rotate to access every inch of it. Plus, the bed is raised so you don't need to get on your knees when conducting your gardening tasks.
For people with physical disabilities, and the elderly, the keyhole garden is the ultimate way to enjoy this recreational hobby.
How do you build a keyhole garden?
Start by driving a stake into the ground as your pivot point. Then attach a piece of string to the stake with a marker measured out at 50cm(20") and draw your inner circle. This is where you will stand while performing your gardening tasks.
Then, move the marker 1.5m (5') away from the stake along the piece of string and draw another circle on the ground. This will become the outer perimeter of your garden bed and will allow you to reach all areas from your inner pivot position.
You will need to allow an access point of at least 50cm (20") to get into the centre of the garden once it's been built.
Once this has been done then it's time to build the raised bed. You could use rocks, bricks, sleepers or any other material that can retain the soil within the beds. The height required will be at least 1m (3' 3") so it will need to be constructed well enough to hold all that soil.
Finally, once the bed has been built fill it with soil, compost and animal manures to create your gardening plot.
Why would I bother building one of these?
The ultimate answer, apart from the accessibility features mentioned earlier, is the efficient use of space. Consider creating a square, raised garden bed that you could access from every angle. It could only be 1m x 1m (3.3ft x 3.3ft) but would take up a space measuring 2m x 2m for access. Therefore, this one garden bed would require 4sq. mtrs but only provide 1sq. m of gardening plot. The arable portion of this plot is only 25%.
A keyhole garden, on the other hand - with the measurements quoted earlier, would take up an area totaling 9 sq.ms and provide a plot size of 5.78 sq.ms. The arable portion of this plot is a whopping 64%.
Even if you were to try and maximise the space used for the square garden beds the best percentage of arable land that you would get would still only be 36%, almost half that of the keyhole garden.
So, it makes complete sense to build these rather than waste valuable space constructing their square counterparts.
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Comments
What a brilliant idea! And great instructions.
Posted by: Nancy Bond | August 28, 2008 11:49 AM
Hey can you give alittle more info on herb spiral gardening..want to do it in my backyard!
http://www.home-living-news.co.uk
Posted by: Divya | August 29, 2008 4:12 PM
This is brilliant, Stuart! I am definitely bookmarking this one. And, I thought when I grew up that I wouldn't have to know math :)
Posted by: Barbee' | August 29, 2008 11:51 PM
Have a look at ArtistsGardens' recent post - she has a lovely keyhole garden she is developing
Posted by: patientgardener | August 31, 2008 9:53 PM
How interesting. I designed one of these for a client but it is going to be a butterfly garden with a bird bath in the middle. There will be two levels, the first for lantana and the second for salvia. Also there will be butterfly bushes at the entrance.
Posted by: vanillalotus | September 1, 2008 12:36 PM
You missed the whole point of this garden, which is to have a compost in the center, thus giving the garden continuous leaching nutrients.
Posted by: Debbie Sterling | February 2, 2009 3:56 AM
Have to disagree with you Debbie. The whole point of a keyhole garden is "access". If you go and fill the center with compost then access is denied. Plus, compost usually leeches downwards rather than horizontally.
Posted by: Stuart
|
February 2, 2009 4:58 AM
You have demonstrated well that the keyhole garden concept is a useful technique in many situations.
Nonetheless, your comparison to square foot gardening seems problematic.
First, your calculations assume that the space surrounding a square foot garden would be usable for gardening should the gardener wish to use it that way.
Also, a square-foot garden doesn't have to be a square. Many are rectangular and/or are terraced which could provide easier access depending on the garden layout. It would even be possible to design a square foot garden with a keyhole, thus removing your main objection to it.
Third, a square foot garden is easier to construct and requires fewer materials as it requires only 6 inches of growing medium.
Fourth, a square foot garden is more easily divisible for planting being on a grid.
Posted by: Babette | February 6, 2009 9:14 AM
The thing about the keyhole garden is that the middle is supposed to be used as a compost heap, with a section sliced out of the main circle (like a pie with a piece cut out). The slice left free is used for access, and the compost drains out and down as the garden is supposed to be built slanting upward to the middle.
Posted by: Brigitta | May 12, 2009 3:03 AM
Very nice but your spece calculations are all off. (on rechecking I see that stuart already made a remark to this.) For one thing, mathematically it might be correct just for the numbers for one garden, but if I have several round gardens close together, there will be enormeous waste of space in between those gardens. Although it may seem that a squarefootgarden of 1m. sq may require 2m.sq. because of the needed workspace around it, this is not true. A SQF garden can be worked from both sides instead of 4 sides and the path can also be used to work on an adjacent SQF garden. Much therefore will depend on the shape of the plot.
a plot of 1.2x3.90 (4.68 m2) will allow two 1.2x1.2 sqf's (2,88 m2)=62% efficiency, whereas you could not build a round 1.5 radius garden in that.
OK I am intrigued by this. Suppose you have a plot of 6x3 meters. That would allow 2 keyhole gardens.
Those have a surface (a piece) of (7,06-0,785-0,5=) 5,7 meters. This however is not calculating the width of the stone, put those at 20 cm, then the numbers are: (r1=1,3m, r2=0,7 m) (5,3-1,5-0,5=) 3,3m2 per piece so a 6x3m (18m2) plot would house 6,6m2 growing space that is an efficiency of 36%.
On that same 6x3 spot one could construct 6 1,25x1,25 plots and a 3x0,9 spot with still having 50cm paths so that comes to 12,08m2. that is 67% efficiency.
Nevertheless keyhole gardens seem like a nice concept
Posted by: ed | May 15, 2009 3:50 AM