Other People's Yards

I think you’re missing some options on your poll. We used to say, “hey, it’s a free country!” to stuff like this. Wait, I haven’t heard that one in a long time. Guess it’s gone outta style. Nevermind.

Still, these people are guilty of taking money from the gaping maws of Monsanto. Shame on them.

james

James, I actually had one option like that, but edited it to “Yes, as long as it is well-tended.” I suppose I should have a true libertarian choice.

It’s very liberating to grow your own salad, which is incredibly easy to do.

I think as the environment continues to go downhill and food and gas prices continue to skyrocket, people should be growing their own food wherever they can find space. I’d much prefer my neighbors to have lovely little tomato plants in their front yards than be rudely awoken at 8:00 am on a Sunday by the sound of their lawnmower.

I have one set of neighbors whose front-yard veggie garden (combining straight soil-planting and containers) is absolutely enormous – and beautiful! Well-tended tomatoes and peppers, sprawling zucchini, flowering herbs… I imagine it produces a huge amount of food and it actually looks really, really nice. Now if only I could get an invitation to their house for dinner…

I live out in the sticks so it is fascinating to me that this is even an issue! It never even occurred to me that people would get in each other’s faces about growing vegetables in their front yards.

I think any kind of garden is a beautiful and valuable asset to a neighborhood.

I live out in the sticks too. People here don’t have vegetable gardens in their front yards. Mostly they try to grow cars. Or they’re harvesting rust, I’m not sure.

james

I love seeing other people’s veggie gardens–it gives me ideas!

On a personal note, I have strawberries, citrus trees, a pom tree and some blueberry bushes in the front, and I think I manage to disguise them among the flowers, but I have this giant ‘volunteer’ (we didn’t plant it, and never water it!) tomato plant that’s like something out of Little Shop of Horrors, and I always wonder what people think as they walk by. Now I know…

I must admit I grow edibles in the front yard, but really it’s part of my landscaping. Why plant elephant leaves when rhubarb is just as pretty? Strawberries make excellent borders around a patio, and mint is a fragrant all-purpose groundcover. I’d love some blueberry bushes, but they don’t grow well in my climate.

You don’t have to do a garden as an either/or project. How about hanging baskets of cherry tomatoes, or “bright Lights” chard or Brussel Sprouts in the large container instead of the plume of grass we generally use. Mesclun in the flower boxes… it will be done by the time you usually put in annuals. Run your cucumbers up the trellis you use for Morning Glories. A triple row of corn will make a great “background plant” and you can use the dry stalks for your autumn decorations! Maybe it is time for us all to think “outside the box”. Heavenly Days, Why not put strawberries in the strawberry pots!!!

Elaine and Christina: I agree that you can intersperse veggies with flowers and other foliage effectively. If nobody else in your neighborhood is growing veggies out front, it’s probably best to start small with a few items that blend well with the other plants and have attractive foliage and/or flowers themselves.

Now, if I just left my yard to nature, I’d have a full blackberry orchard in 6 months! It takes work to keep it from becoming blackberries! And if you DID let it go to blackberries, the neighbors would be complaining about them from the “invasive weed” standpoint rather than the “front yard veggies” standpoint.

This really caught my attention because I just read Edible Estates by Fritz Haeg and tried to like it but the gardens weren’t that pretty and the tone of the book was so hostile! Why not compromise and add a pretty border of green and/or red lettuce, maybe some strawberries in the front yard and put the less attractive vegetables in the back?

I guess I would probably prefer people to grow their vegetable in the back yard but with the modern there is often no back yard. I would prefer people to grow their own for better health, etc. All things considered, the answer has to be a resounding yes. I think some things just take a little getting used too.

Once again its a problem easily solved. Grow veggies in the front and backyard. Isn’t it a good feeling to have someone enjoy “the fruits of your labor”? I recommend a little sign on the front yard stating “take what you can use, leave the rest”. After all, you’d have the backyard for your own personal harvest. I’m growing various tomatoe and pepper plants, more than i could use. I plan on giving them away at the roadside. Last year there was a farmer that did that and inspired me to do the same. You never know maybe you might give someone a good feeling inside and they may pass it along by helping someone else. You can never be too kind, only not kind enough.

It doesn’t bother me much, but then my grandfather has always had a few exuberantly healthy tomato plants in his front yard. We are planning to put blueberry bushes, strawberries, and maybe even a pretty, happy pepper bush in our front yard amidst the other plants.

Honestly, if it’s well-kept and not a haunted house garden, I don’t care. It’s a free country…even if it isn’t magazine worthy, it’s nicer than some of the naked yards or yards with hyper-overgrown evergreens blocking every molecule of light from the home in question. At least people are attempting to feed themselves or others! I think it shows a throwback to that good, old-fashioned American ideal of taking care of oneself and one’s family.

I agree that this is supposed to be a free country and if a person wants their veggies in the front yard that’s their business. However, I would caution people who live in high traffic areas that their vegetables would be healthier further away from the road and all the vehicle exhaust.

I moved to the San Joaquin Valley from Southern California after a divorce. When I was out of work I was amazed how easy it was to grow everything in my yard. So I put up a high fence around my corner lot for safety and started to work on one side of my front yard. In 2002 I planted my first vegetable garden, and they all laughed at me. For the last six year this city girl has enjoyed her veggie garden while saving money. In the store Roma tomatoes are $1.99 a pound. I paid $1.59 for six plants. Today they no longer laugh at me because the killer tomatoes thing has everyone afraid. There’s nothing like the wonderful taste of fresh vegetables right off the vine. Is it a good idea to have a vegetable garden in the front yard? It depends on where you live, and if you can take care of it. As for me, I had to plant roses just inside of my fence to keep the people out. Just a few steps away from my front door I have tomatoes, cucumbers, chives, peppers, baking pumpkins, lemons, pomegranates, melons, Muscat and seedless grapes. I have the joy of giving some away to family and friend.

In our old home we grew tomatoes and lettuce in our front yard with a beautiful apricot tree. We didn’t have room at the back for a big garden so planted what we could wherever we could. We now have 1200 sq metres and have a lovely big vegetable garden at the back. Would be happy to put it out the front again but we have heaps of room and don’t need to.

I have a small urban yard in Seattle. Half of my backyard is all edible: vegetables, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, rhubarb, artichokes, asparagus, herbs. The rest mixes edible (currant and gooseberry bushes, grape vines, apple, peach, plum and fig trees [espaliered or in pots] and more herbs) with the ornamental for a lush display around our patio.

A year ago, we ripped out our front lawn and relandscaped. I have a designated veggie patch in a prime sunny spot (currently planted to squash, sunflowers and peppers) that in summer is blocked from view of passers by. I’ve integrated some evergreen blueberry bushes, and decided that the only way to make room for pumpkins and sprawling winter squash plants was to let them ramble among my ornamental plantings. In the fall, I will scatter garlic bulbs and onion seeds in the front beds, since the space in my back yard veggie beds is too precious. I had so many complements this spring on the appearance of my overwintered Swiss chard that I plan to plant even more this fall in the front yard as an edible ornamental. I also have tons of herb plants in front…the ultimate edible ornamental.

Basically, I don’t really care what people think about what I choose to plant, but my yard does look nice (one of the best on my block), and I get compliments all the time.

Being a southern country girl who tranplanted to Salt Lake City, UT, I had gardened for most of my life. The problem I faced was that my new husband had 2 dogs in his backyard, and no matter what kind if fence I put up to keep them out of my garden space, they got in. Aussie heelers are way smart and have great problem solving skills.
The solution was to put my garden in the front yard. Organic and companion planting went great, no complaints from neighbors (as word got around we had people driving by to see our yard), and many of the walking groups changed their route to come through our neighborhood to see how everything was growing. A simple fence kept them on the sidewalk, so no loss of produce.
Oh, and a couple of weeks after moving the garden out front, we found a new home for the one dog, and the second dog left to live with his girlfriend several blocks away (after escaping up to 4 times a day for three weeks).
Now I’m planning edible landscaping so it looks better, but still produces food.

In my urban setting I don’t have a back yard, so I do all my veggie gardening in front. Over the last three years I’ve enjoyed it so much that I now have a website, http://www.localfoodalbuquerque.com, devoted to the subject. With the economy and energy problems that we’re all facing, I’m seeing formerly hostile neighbors ask me how to grow food out front.

If that’s all somebody has is a front space, tidy garden or not, I’m completely fine with the veggies up front. With the economy the way it is, I think we need to move past looks for the time being. People have lost thier jobs, homes (there goes the gardening spot), even marriages are very stressed at this time, who cares what it looks like with other stressful stuff on the plate. As long as it serves it’s purpose.

Now that being said, I personally have a very limited back yard space suitable for veggies, so everything has to go in front. I do have to fence because of deer, so stealing is less likely with me and I have a decent sized front area, so I can keep my veggies 20′ in from the road. I myself try to make it look appealing (flowers completely surrounding it), but if somebody else can’t, who cares.

Also raised bed gardening to make it more tidy, is not cheaper. Most free materials are not the best to use (unless you can get free bricks or concrete blocks) and the correct or likewise type of soil to fill them with, is not cheap, if you can’t come up with it for free, ditto for container gardening. Container gardening has a large upfront cost.

Sorry if I sounded pissy, it’s just my opinion.

Melissa

One of the most beautiful gardens I ever saw was a front yard vegetable garden in Boston. I grew up in the kind of Italian neighborhood where Grandpas pulled plums, apples, figs, tomatos, grapes (for wine and eating), mulberries, eggplants, and you name it out of modest urban lots. We lost those skills and that pride somewhere along the way and now its better to have a chemically fed, overwatered swath of green in front of your house than food?

This is the year a front yard veggie garden goes in my suburban quarter acre.

I hate lawns and ornamentals. They are a waste of resources, time, petrol chemicals, and they degrade the smidgen of habitat left for native plants and animals. Also, they are often ugly or bland. I plant veggies in my front yard because it’s huge and the backyard is tiny, but it’s strikes me as bizarre that the shame should be around veggies rather than the traditional yard that is of so little value beyond a type of conformity.

I live in downtown Denver, CO in a very urban area and my backyard is to the east and gets about 4 hours sunshine a day until the sun is blocked by the house. The front yard, however, gets at least 6-8 hours of sun a day. I think the choice of where to grow vegetables successfully is obvious. I think it’s just a matter of actually tending to your garden faithfully, and not letting it run into the neighbor’s yard.

I have a huge front yard, we are planning to make a vegetable garden in front of our house with a flower bed in front of our boxes which would make it more difficult to pick our vegetables. I am worried about our neighbors since I havent seen anything like it in our area Pasadena CA. if anyone doesnt like it oh well its my yard:)

What I like about frontyard vegetable gardens is that they promote neighbourly conversation and interaction. When people walk by our home and see the vegetables growing they are curious and they want to ask questions. If we just grew our vegetables in the backyard very few people would know and they wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t ask questions or know to ask if they could have a look at what we are growing. We get some great advice that we wouldn’t have got otherwise. Very, very few people don’t like it.