The co-founder of The Cook's Garden seed catalog also designs ornamental kitchen gardens, where plants are chosen as much for their colors and textures as for their flavors.

''I've always been interested in using my eyes as well as my mind while I garden,'' Ogden said. ''I usually border my [vegetable] beds with lively things like decorative parsley, fennel or kale.''

Today's ornamental kitchen garden generally is smaller and less formal than the traditional potager (puh'-tuh-zhay) that originated in 16th-century Europe. With the typical French chateau potager, a tasty tapestry of herbs, fruits, flowers and vegetables was planted a few feet from the kitchen door and delivered dew-fresh to the table.

Odgen carries that tradition literally from the garden to the dining room at her Manchester Village, Vt., home. She garnishes with chives and flowers, and grows pansies around her vegetables so she can gather them as she walks by.

''One of the things we know but don't think much about is that a splash of color enhances the appetite,'' she said.

Record high food costs have made vegetable growing more popular, but that doesn't mean gardeners must work from miniature farm production plots - rectangular in shape with plants aligned in parallel rows. That's a proven arrangement, to be sure, but it's also uninteresting.

The humble vegetable, if chosen well and given some landscaping help, can elevate the kitchen garden into a living, vibrant work of art.

The medieval potager garden was distinguished by a combination of walls, gates, walkways and growing beds. They provided a sense of privacy, a degree of shelter, enough space for crop rotation, seasonal beauty, usefulness and order. Many of those plants, including fruit trees and shrubs, were trained to grow upward or espaliered into two-dimensional decorations on walls or fences.

Here are some tips to make your creative gardening endeavors more palatable:

* FOLLOW THE SUN: Vegetables need their day in the sun, or at least six to eight hours of it, if they're to produce the best yields

* PLAN SMALL: Then plant smaller. We're talking about using a heavy mix of perennials here, things like asparagus, rhubarb, horseradish, chives, strawberries, fruiting shrubs and trees. Find varieties that are at the same time attractive and flavorful. Start with a 10-foot by 10-foot section. You always can add to it later.

* SUCCESSION PLANTING: Get a second crop into the ground immediately after harvesting the first. Depending upon your climate and the maturity dates of your plants, a compact ornamental kitchen garden can be good for as many as three crops per growing season.

* BORDER PLANTS: If you prefer a living barrier to stone walls, then choose a hardy ornamental shrub that will flower, fruit and produce a colorful background when viewed from within or without.

* GROWING UP: If you're starved for room, then plant deep and grow things up as well as out. Use vining plants like grapes, beans and squashes.

* STOP AND EAT THE ROSES: Some of the newer, hardier shrub roses bloom from mid-spring until the killing frosts arrive in the fall. Roses are more than eye candy. Their petals and hips make into snacks, tea, honey, and sugar-dusted or chocolate-covered garnishes.