If you were asked to draw a bed plan, most people would probably draw it from above. That’s what we’re used to – from maps or building plans. That works fine when you want to place plants freely across the bed, for example carrots in the top left and onions below them.
In row companion planting, though, we don’t arrange plants in patches or squares on the bed – where many of the benefits of companion planting would only work along the boundaries between plants. Instead, we sow in rows. With our carrot and onion example, we now have two options: we can plant two rows, one with carrots and one with onions. Or one row where we alternate the two plants. That way every plant gets the full benefit of companion planting.
Example: A bed with row companion planting, drawn from above.
If we’re growing the same plants along the whole row, why would we draw them the full length of the row? This leads to a simplified, more abstract way of representing things: we draw a line that represents the front edge of the bed. By front edge I mean the side where you stand in front of the bed and the rows run away from you into it. On this line we only draw one plant per row.
Example: A more abstract view of the same bed from the front edge.
The top-down view becomes a front-edge view. Whether the bed is 2 metres deep or 20 metres deep (row length) doesn’t matter for this representation. This saves a lot of space on paper – and of course on screen in grove.eco.
The space we gain this way is put to good use. Because a bed changes over the year as earlier and later crops come and go. In grove.eco there’s a view like this for every month, so each month can be planned and the differences from month to month are immediately visible.
Example: One month of this bed in grove.eco (if you’ve seen the examples above, you’ll be glad I didn’t draw the plants myself 😉)