April is the month when folks in the northern tier of the United States uncover from a blanket of snow and darkness and see what mischief Father Winter has brought to the garden.

It’s also the month when garden plans—sketched during the height of February snowstorms—transmogrify into garden reality.

This month also happened to be the month that I spent just 13 of its 30 days at home. Needless to say, there wasn’t much transmogrifying going on in any of my gardens this April.

However, my travels did take me to California on a garden-related trip, during which I found some much-needed garden planning inspiration. The spark came from two raised beds overflowing with produce. You see a snippet of part of the beds in the photo above. Pretty sweet, right? Yes, they were planted and grown inside a greenhouse and are in perfect condition, but still I believe something like this is within anyone’s grasp.

It turns out, this summer I will be planning, planting, and maintaining two raised beds that will be accessible mainly from just one side, as these are. Here are the points I will take from these beds and implement in my own way:

Tall items in the back

This may be the most obvious point—put the tomatoes in the back. These tomatoes are on wooden tripods. In the past I’ve only used single stakes. Three stakes per plant will give plenty of stability to its growth.

Confine Roots: Raised Vegetable Beds

You can’t tell from here but those tomatoes are actually growing in half-barrels placed on top of the raised bed. This confines roots to the barrel and gives the other items in the bed more space to grow.

Use Smart Pots

Instead of using half barrels I will use the fabric Smart Pots I mentioned earlier this month. I can cut small crosses into the vertical portion of the fabric and plant herbs or lettuce.

Create a Pattern

There is a repeating pattern here. Between the tall indeterminant tomatoes are bush tomatoes. In the front there are three sweet potato vines and the middle row has repeating and assorted peppers. Either end has some sort of squash. I take it these are meant to spread outside the raised bed.

Use Every Inch of your Raised Vegetable Beds

The beds are packed. And there is something appealing about it. Using every square inch is admirable and even necessary if you are a small-space gardener.

Back to that sweet potato vine—that isn’t a vegetable! But it’s a nice color and is again something meant to wind its way outside the bed.

Will my two raised beds look like this? Probably not. And the point isn’t to reproduce this but to use the foundations of the plan. I will, however, go vertical and outside the container with the plants, use color and repetition, and include a few foliage or flowers.