In one of the classes I teach we start off with a garden visualization. We close our eyes and imagine ourselves sitting in our summer gardens.

(Come on, play along!)

It’s one of those crystal clear, blue sky days with no humidity and no mosquitoes (and no weeds?!). Just a perfect summer day.

When everyone has transported themselves into their gardens, I ask them the following questions:

What do you see?

What do you hear?

What do you smell?

How do you feel?

Then, I give them some time to reflect on and write down the images and sensations they experienced.

A common complaint about vegetable gardens is that they’re not very attractive. I couldn’t disagree more! You can have a garden that produces a lot of food and is also a beautiful part of your home landscape.

The simplest thing you can do to elevate your garden from a place where you grow food to a garden that draws in and wows visitors and passersby on the street is to add flowers.

And the easiest place to add flowers is on the ends of your garden beds. (Don’t have garden beds? Here’s why you need them.)