Lately I've been thinking about my front yard a lot. It gets great light, it's pretty big and it's level. I think front yards have a lot of potential for edible gardening but it's tricky. You have to pay a lot more attention to aesthetics or your neighbors will hate you. :) A few weeks ago, when I discovered Freedom Gardens' site, I stumbled across their page, Liberate Your Yard , and I've found myself staring out the window at my front yard ever since. Sometimes it's hard to re-imagine a space that we've been so conditioned to expect to look a certain way. Front yards: grass lawn, some bushes near the house, maybe an ornamental tree, maybe some shrubs. That's a front yard. So how does a front yard become both functional (edible) and beautiful? Well, as luck would have it, Regan sent me this great link (she read my mind?) to Edible Estates. If anyone is looking for inspiration for creating an edible front yard this is a great site. It's chock full of pictures, which show the progression of the transformation from boring to edible fabulousness, and some sets even include the hand drawn plans for how they put it all together. My two favorite front yards were this one from Baltimore ...
...and this one from Maplewood, NJ :
Maybe one day I'll have a picture of my own edible front yard to post here. Have any of you guys tried tranforming your front yards? If you've got pictures or suggestions send them. I'll post them here and we can all benefit from your successful experiences (or learn from your failures).
Thanks for the links! I've recently been wondering the same thing. My backyard is nearly completely shaded by a big maple. My front yard gets great sunlight.
I'd love to start a garden in the front this spring. I've been needing some ideas on how to keep it decent looking. Also, since there's no fence - how do you keep neighborhood dogs from peeing all over your vegetables? Raised beds?
md
Posted by: Mary Delicate | September 17, 2008 at 01:40 PM