We design inspired landscapes.
American Potager, LLC is a landscape architecture studio based in Worthington, Ohio. We collaborate with homeowners, businesses, architects and contractors to create exceptional outdoor spaces. We specialize in creating gardens that are beautiful, useful and restorative. We produce detailed, fully rendered garden master plans to guide our clients and help them juggle all of the decisions that go into making a special garden.
We love meeting with clients on site, in their own gardens, and prefer to work that way, but we are happy to arrange a bespoke garden design remotely, if desired.
What Is A Potager?
The jardin potager is the French word for kitchen garden. The phrase literally means a garden for the soup pot. It’s a designed seasonal kitchen garden filled with fruits, vegetables, herbs, edible and non-edible flowers that dictates what is on the menu or plopped in a vase; the soup of the day changes based on what is growing in the garden. The potager is more than a kitchen garden; it is a philosophy of living that is dependent on the seasons and the immediacy of the garden.
Jennifer R. Bartley, PLA, ASLA
Founder and Lead Designer
Jennifer Bartley spent an idyllic childhood exploring the woods, Indian mound and ravine near her home, making forts and picking wildflowers. She gathered raspberries and elderberries from the nearby fields and her mom would make jams and jellies. Every special occasion prompted a visit to the garden to pick flowers for a vase or to decorate a cake. This love of nature and the land inspired her to pursue her profession.
Jennifer holds an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree in landscape architecture from The Ohio State University. She graduated summa cum laude and received an Honor Award from The American Society of Landscape Architects for Excellence in the Study of Landscape Architecture. She is licensed as a landscape architect in Ohio, South Carolina and California.
She is the author, photographer and illustrator of Designing the New Kitchen Garden and The Kitchen Gardener’s Handbook and frequently lectures on seasonal, sustainable and edible garden design.
In 2021, she completed the certificate program in Plant-Based Nutrition from eCornell University.
She continues to use her home, (the very property where she grew up), now called Sugarloaf, as a lab to study plants and materials. It’s a creative place for friends, family, children and grandchildren to gather, eat good food and explore nature.