The Beer Lover’s Garden
You’ve imagined it. A place where row after row of green-gold barley stalks wave, their seed heads gently swelling in the sun. A tall trellis swathed in tangled hop vines, or better still, a shady pergola twined with fragrant cones, casts a cool shadow where you sit drinking frosty Pilsner Urquell. In a nearby bed, amaranth nods its tenticular blossom, striking a contrast with glossy gray horehound. At this time of year, when frozen gardens slumber, such a place haunts a beer-loving gardener’s dreams.
Often, reality is only fantasy made real, so we’ve designed just such a garden to show you what might be accomplished on your own patch of ground. You don’t need to be a homebrewer to desire such a place, just a person for whom good beer is an encompassing, and uncompromising, ideal.
You don’t really need a lot of space, either. Many brewing ingredients are ideal for micro- or square-foot gardening. You can grow a respectable amount grain in a 4- by 8-foot raised bed. Hops can be grown in containers. Our ideal garden measures only 20 by 20, but you can scale it up or down to suit your needs and space.
A Virtual Tour
A tour of the beer lover’s garden starts at its southern edge, where a brick path leads through the barley field. Here a mix of varieties such as Harrington, Excelsior and Klages raise their spiky seed heads.
Beyond that, a swath of green grass separates two herb beds. Dandelions lurk among the blades, waiting to add sour bitterness to the brew pot. A tinkling fountain or small, still pool at this spot can serve to remind visitors that water, along with malt, yeast, and hops, is one of the four pillars of beer—and it isn’t a bad spot to stash a few cold ones for emergencies.
Shrubby lavender, thyme and hyssop, once used to flavor the black Mumm ale of the 16th century, now provide forage for bees. A striking alecost, 5 feet high and 4 across, waves tiny yellow blossoms in the air. Silvery betony, a forgotten bittering agent, sprawls beneath purple quinoa. A bramble of beach roses matures hips for Polish ale. A row of chili pepper plants commemorates the hot beer craze of the 1980s, while a small blue spruce harkens back to the spruce ales of the Revolutionary War era.
A peak-roofed pergola made of cedar poles sits between the herb beds, while hop vines bearing fragrant cones tumble over it in a cascade. At the far northern edge of the garden, Peruvian Morado corn, used to brew the corn ale of the Andes, stands in neat rows, surrounded by tangling vines of New England pie pumpkins—just the thing for a witchy Halloween ale.
Link to the Complete Article
——————–
