Zone 1 defense!

 The first zone is going to be the vegetable zone. In the area I want to set up plots to grow all my perennial crops. The challenge here is that this area is also where my children play and I can't take that away from them. So I'm going to have to get creative.

First: Raised Garden Bed
OK this is a no brainer. The raised bed is going to be 4 feet by 8 feet and fit next to the gate on the right hand side there. This area is south facing as easy access to water and the kid don't really play in this area. Now the cool adaptation I'm going to make to this raised garden bed is in the construction. Which can be found in detail here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/An-Improved-Raised-Bed-Garden/

Then general idea is to use homemade concrete brackets to hold your raised bed gardens together. So when a board starts to rot you just replace it. With traditional all wood raised bed construction you could only replace the boards as long as your corner post were good. But once those rotted your almost had to start all over. Very cool design and I can't wait to use it.

Second: Hanging Garden
Again not a new idea but until this year it is one I almost scrapped. I have tried hanging gardens for the last few years and weak results. But this year I made a Hail Mary Pass attempt and it worked! (I'm not going to get into all the details now but this spring when I start planting I will go more in depth) All I'm going to do for this next spring is to sink 4x4 post at the corners of my raised bed garden and run boards along them to hang my bucket garden from. This will allow me to not take up more yard and time and time again I keep reading about the benefits of cascade gardening or to set up your plants so when you water one the excess water goes to another part of your garden. So when I water my hanging garden any extra will filter down to my raised bed garden.

Third: Play Structure = Grow Structure
Now this is cool and VERY original (at least I haven't found many other people that do this)  What it is going to be is a "fort"/Jungle Gym that my kids can play on but I have worked in grow mediums to the structure. Cool right! Peak your interest RIGHT! Love the idea and want to see more RIGHT! Well you're going to have to wait :-( Sorry the designs aren't done yet and I still have some research that needs to be done to make sure it not only will look nice (last thing I want is the city on my butt), my kids will play one it, and stuff to grew in it too. My plan is to finish the design this winter and start building as soon as most of the snow melts. So keep watching for more details.