The pair created expansive formal gardens incorporating a balcony and balustrade, a papyrus-filled grotto, limestone terraces, stacked-stone walls, and sweeping lawns overlooking a parklike landscape with a lake. Amid the splendor, they tucked a charming potager (kitchen garden) just outside the kitchen in a sunny plot between the house and freestanding garages.

Much attention was paid to making the house and surrounding gardens, which were built between 1997 and 1999, appear instantly old, and the kitchen garden offers an outstanding example. Hugh designed the potager along geometric lines, using 10 raised beds of varying shapes and sizes to create a pattern that mirrors itself around a centerpiece water feature fashioned from an old millstone originally used in a 19th-century gristmill.

For the pathways, Hugh used old brick. "We chose a herringbone pattern, and we laid the brick directly in sand, without any mortar," he says. "Then we went back and removed some chunks and planted herbs in the sandy spaces." Raised beds were formed from the limestone remaining after the house's construction. "We picked stones of varying sizes and thicknesses and rusticated the edges," says Hugh. "Finally, we had them sprayed with a formula of cow manure and yeast to encourage moss to grow more quickly." Some herbs, such as lemon thyme, have been left unchecked, blurring the borders.

The trees, shrubs, and plants were selected for their sizes to make the kitchen garden settle in quickly. Mary Palmer arranged informal groupings of plants within dense hedges of 'Kingsville Dwarf' boxwood, and she anchored corners with larger American boxwood clipped into rounds and cones. Pairs of sweet bay magnolias frame climbing roses trained against the garden's east- and west-facing walls. The lady of the house loves roses, "in particular, roses climbing on trellises," says Mary Palmer.

The homeowner requested a garden that was both romantic and practical. And in the tradition of kitchen gardens, the potager is both ornamental and productive. The family clips flowers for arrangements and harvests herbs, fruits, and vegetables for the table. Plantings rotate seasonally, and the edibles feature a mouthwatering assortment, including chard, kale, collards, bell peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries, purple basil, chives, thyme, parsley, French tarragon, and Cuban oregano.

Noting that tomatoes need cages for support, Hugh decided to make some that were attractive even when little was growing on them. He drew from memory ones he had seen in English gardens and had them fabricated in iron with small medallions to add weight and embellishment. "It is important that the garden not appear too flat," he says, "And the tomato cages help maintain that vital vertical element."

A romantic breezeway, punctuated by a copper-roofed gazebo, connects the house and the garages and borders the potager on the north side. The homeowners occasionally set up tables throughout the breezeway for alfresco entertaining.

The appealing garden has been successful since its completion. "The mixture of flowers, herbs, and vegetables is such a clever way to plant," says Hugh. "It's a controllable size with a working garden that helps supply the table. But even homeowners with garden plots one-third this size can create the same old-fashioned style of potager."