Edible landscaping is an easy way to grow food while keeping a front yard beautiful and tidy. Based on lessons I learned from keeping an edible front yard for five years, this article will help you create a bountiful edible landscape.
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Why Landscape with Edibles?
Simply put: We can’t eat lawn. When I found out that lawn is the largest crop in the United States—and realized how abundant it is in the suburbs—I decided to give my yard a makeover! With less than 2% of the American population farming (some sources say less than 1%), the suburbs are primed to lead the up-and-coming small “farm” movement.
Suburbanites typically spend their weekends maintaining an ornamental lawn and pointless landscape plants, while edibles could be more beautiful, produce an edible yield, and require not much more maintenance.
I have a particular fondness for a productive landscape, but I also enjoy a beautiful one that attracts beneficial insects and is friendly to wildlife. Edible landscaping is a softer, gentler approach that combines traditional landscaping with row cropping techniques, and is both aesthetically pleasing and ecologically friendly.
Landscaping with Intention
My edible front yard is an intentional landscape. While the development and maintenance of a lawn is relatively mind-numbing (not to mention potentially polluting), what I have found after five years of “farming” my front yard is that I’m more alive and engaged with the edible landscape. For example, when the strawberries, cherries, or black raspberries ripen, it is an exciting moment! Nothing in a traditional landscape is that exciting.
An edible landscape gave me a reason to interact with my neighbors. While the usual dog walker or passerby will exchange niceties about the weather, the edible landscape gave us something interesting to talk about. The book Edible Estates is a fantastic picture book of lawns across the U.S. that were replaced with a productive landscape. The book also explores the social aspects of having a productive front yard and the subsequent interactions with neighbors.
Rosalind Creasy, author of Edible Landscaping, is the modern pioneer of the movement, yet landscaped gardens containing edibles have been the norm throughout history from English cottage gardens all the way back to ancient Persia. Edibles truly make supremely beautiful landscapes.
My Edible Front Yard
After much trial and error in the aesthetic department, my edible front yard now contains currant bushes, black raspberries, strawberries, cherry trees, and a variety of edible herbs and flowers.
Below is a picture of our house before we purchased it in 2005, and after we turned it into an edible landscape.
Take a (virtual) tour of my yard.
Below I’ll describe my experience growing vegetables in the front yard: which ones I would grow again and which ones bombed.
3 Things to Consider before Breaking Ground
1. Deer, Kids, and Dogs: What do they have in common? They all take the most direct path from point A to point B. If garden beds are easy to step in or walk through, then they probably will be by this bunch! Create diversions and obstacles that direct traffic away from your prized plants.
When we planted edibles in the parking strip (between the sidewalk and street), we planned accordingly for the constant stream of traffic by dog walkers, kids on bikes, and parked-car passengers.
2. Time: How much time do you have to commit to maintenance? Ripping out lawn and replacing it with anything else will require more maintenance to keep tidy. If time is not on your side, then consider replacing the existing landscaping plants with edibles, while leaving the lawn intact.
Take it from me: Annual plants will need more attention than perennials to retain an aesthetic appeal. As we began our edible landscape journey five years ago, I had no idea how much time it would take to keep the annual vegetables looking tidy and weed free! You’ll need a plan to fill the space after you harvest them, or risk having empty spots.
This is why we have transitioned our edible front yard to contain mostly perennials.
3. Money: A long-term landscape will be made up of mostly perennials, but plants are expensive. If you don’t mind bare ground for a while, buying seeds will be much cheaper.
We built our landscape over several years to spread out the cost of buying plants. We also used fast-growing annuals to fill in the spaces until perennial plants reached their mature size.
Currant flowers are beloved by pollinators of all kinds.
4 Design Principles for Visual Appeal
1. Simplicity: A simple foundation planting creates balance. Simply replace a traditional hedge with an edible one.
For example, we replaced the traditional foundation hedge lining our front porch with a hedge of currant bushes. Balance remained in the landscape even though the plant species changed. (While the currant bushes were young, we grew a “hedge” of broccoli to fill the space)!
2. Line: A line defines a space and connects people to the landscape. The line could be a curved walkway or an edge of the garden, anywhere our eyes are drawn to follow a line or edge.
In our garden we used a rock border to define the raised bed “berm” from the remaining lawn, and it was a focal point that received a lot of compliments.
A rock border frames the strawberry “berm” and blocks of color unify the garden.
3. Unity: A unified grouping of plants creates order and attracts attention from both humans and beneficial insects. Group plants of the same type together rather than alternating them with other colors or textures.
We planted the flower garden with groups of bold colors as a backdrop to the edibles.
Read more about unity in the landscape.
4. Emphasis: A specimen tree creates a focal point. Instead of a Japanese maple, dogwood, or other common specimen tree, try a fruit tree instead. Lee Reich has some great ideas in his book Landscaping with Fruit.
Don’t worry, I didn’t know any of these principles when I got started. I learned them over time after many trowels and errors.
Would you like to learn more about planting an edible landscape that gives you an edible yield while improving the biodiversity of your yard?
You’ll find loads of information just like this in my book, The Suburban Micro-Farm.
Plant An Edible Foundation
A foundation planting simply hugs the foundation of the house. We planted red and black currants in front of our front porch because currants are shade tolerant, easy to grow, have beautiful fruits (red currants), and are fragrant when brushed against (black currants).
We also planted black raspberries underneath the front windows because they are shade tolerant, have a clumping habit (they won’t “walk” around the yard), have beautiful red canes in winter, beautiful fruit, and are relatively easy to prune.
black raspberries in the edible landscape
Other edible foundation plants: bush cherry, gooseberry, and rugosa rose. (They each make a nice hedge and can be pruned for tidiness.)
Did you know that rugosa rosehips have 50% more vitamin C than an orange?
Strawberries!
Here’s what I’ve learned about strawberries: pretty much everyone loves them. They are shareable and bring a smile to kids and neighbors alike. We grow strawberries in our front yard because they are extremely productive, they don’t take up a lot of space, their deep roots can stabilize a slope and slow drainage, and they make a nice ground cover.
In the edible landscape though, be wary: Regular, June-bearing strawberries create runners that will “jump” out of the bed and “walk” away to plant themselves in pathways and other areas where you don’t want them. Suddenly, the beautiful strawberry bed looks sparse. After a few years the bed will look empty. In addition, June-bearing plants usually need replaced every 3 years.
Instead, I prefer to plant ‘Seascape’ everbearing strawberries. They don’t produce runners and therefore “stay put” in the landscape. I’ve found them to be much better for the edible landscape where I want plants to stay in their place permanently. ‘Seascape’ berries are almost as large–and just as delicious–as June-bearing strawberries. We get about 15 pounds of strawberries each year from our front yard strawberry berm.
Privacy Screens
Living in suburban or urban environments, sometimes we need to create a little buffer for privacy. Edible plants can help create a living screen that will last much longer than a fence and create more biodiversity.
We used dwarf cherry trees in our parking strip because their dense foliage created a soft buffer between our front yard and the street. They also have beautiful white flowers in the spring, gorgeous fruit that looks like Christmas tree ornaments, and interesting bark.
Other plants for privacy screening:
Asparagus, elderberry, nanking cherry, and serviceberry are a few shrub and herbaceous choices.
Chestnut, hickory, pawpaw and persimmon are tall trees with dense foliage, if you have the space for them.
Read more about creating a privacy hedgerow.
our cherry trees in bloom in the parking strip
Vegetables in the Edible Landscape
I’ve learned that vegetables are tricky in the edible landscape. One year I planted garlic in the front yard rain garden, and it was beautiful.
garlic in the edible landscape
I harvested it halfway through June and immediately seeded the area with winter squash (which I thought would make a beautiful ground cover), but multiple seedings never took. The bed–which was center of the front yard–remained empty all season.
Sometimes root vegetables have trouble germinating. Suddenly it’s not only a question of whether I’ll get a harvest, but also what will I need to do to fill the bare spot in the landscape.
Because of this, I avoid single-harvest crops such as root vegetables altogether in the edible landscape.
Rather, I only plant vegetables in which the fruit or leaf is harvested, since the plant will remain intact and continue to produce throughout the season. Examples are cherry tomatoes and peppers–both reliable in the edible landscape–as are cut-and-come-again leafy greens like swiss chard, kale, and collard greens.
In fact, two of my favorite vegetable combinations are swiss chard with sweet alyssum and kale with Johnny jump-ups.
swiss chard and sweet alyssum
Vegetable Color Schemes in the Edible Landscape
I’ve enjoyed giving my edible front yard a theme by choosing an annual color scheme. Here are some of the themes I’ve used. Mix and match, too!
Purple: Red kale, ‘Rosa Bianca’ eggplant, ‘Purple Beauty’ bell pepper, chives
Yellow: yellow chard, yellow bell peppers, yellow cherry tomatoes, yellow California poppies, calendula, sunflowers
White: garlic chives, oregano, sweet alyssum (whites mix well with other colors)
Red: cherry tomatoes, cayenne peppers, red chard, red California poppies, nasturtium
Green: basil, broccoli, kale, collards, parsley, sweet potato, zucchini
Herbs and Flowers in the Edible Landscape
Herbs and flowers are among the easiest additions to the edible landscape. By simply replacing an ornamental flower garden with edible herbs and flowers, you can have beauty and function, too!
My favorite combos: dill with pink cosmos, bronze fennel with white cosmos, basil with most flowers
Herbs for fragrance: chamomile, lavender, sage, lemon balm, rose (plant these along a walkway)
Edible flowers: anise hyssop, calendula, chives, elderberry, lavender, johnny jump-ups, nasturtium, runner beans (attract pollinators, too!)
dill and pink cosmos
Deer Resistant Edibles
Sadly, there aren’t many options for the edible landscaper in deer country. Tall deer fencing around the landscape sort of negates the aesthetic appeal. However, the following are a few plants to try.
With deer I prefer to landscape using perennials because sometimes annual vegetables that are considered deer resistant will suddenly become attractive to them for no apparent reason!
Take note that none of these are deer proof and should be protected, especially when young.
Deer resistant perennials: asparagus, fig, goumi, rhubarb, pawpaw
Deer resistant culinary herbs: chives, dill, fennel, lavender, lemon balm, mint, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme
Deer resistant vegetables: cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes (Plant these at your own risk!)
To learn about creating a deer-deflecting hedge, check out Gaia’s Garden.
Sage is a beautiful, deer-resistant landscape plant that is fragrant when brushed along a walkway.
Summary
An edible landscape is a fulfilling project that will increase your yard’s productivity, biodiversity, and aesthetic appeal.
Need more ideas for creating a beautiful edible landscape?
READ NEXT:
- An Edible Landscape (Virtual) Tour
- How to Grow Edibles in a Parking Strip
- Swiss Chard and Sweet Alyssum: Winning Combination
What edible landscape combinations are your favorites?
penny says
Great post, and awesome before/after photos!
Amy says
Thanks 🙂
Ricki @ The Questionable Homesteader says
Your garden is beautiful and I love that you not only get to eat it but that it has helped you to become more familiar with your neighbors. I also really appreciate the tip on not planting single use veggies, I most likely would have and been left (like you where) with a bare spot for the rest of the season.
Thanks for sharing.
Amy says
I’m so glad the tip on single-harvest veggies was useful! It seems so logical to not plant them in a low-maintenance edible landscape, but I had to have a ‘duh’ moment to realize it 🙂
Anna @ NorthernHomestead says
Love your rock border. WE have one too, but i used mostly bigger rocks. But then sometimes I did run out of bigger and used smaller. I like your idea of having them in two rows. Pinning!
Amy says
Thanks, Anna! I love the bigger rocks and might have used them if I were to do this over again!
Karen says
I’m your latest fan. So pleased to have stumbled across your delightful blog. Thank you for sharing all the wonderful pictures and helpful information. When it comes to gardening, edible landscaping and permaculture are two of my favorite interests. And I must mention I was born and raised in Cincinnati. Knew immediately there was something I liked about you! 😉 Thanks again!
Amy says
I guess there’s something special about us Cincinnati folk 🙂 I’m glad you found me and thanks for following along!
tessa says
Amy, these are amazing tips and photos! Thank you for sharing your wisdom and experience.
Amy says
Thanks, Tessa 🙂
Tammy says
I simply adore this idea. So beautiful. I have a smaller version of an edible landscape but living in Florida. I am sharing this!
Amy says
I can see how an edible landscape in Florida might be a bit different. I’m sure it’s charming 🙂
Jen says
This is such a great post. We ripped out large portions of our front lawn and replaced it with edibles a few years ago and I ran into the same problem as you. I had no idea how much work annual veggies would take to keep the beds attractive. We have nearly all perennials now.
I had to laugh a few weeks ago, when our neighbor was working on selling their home. She complained that they were only now able to sell it because the previous owner of our home had “tomatoes and all sorts of vegetable garden plants right there in the front lawn!”
I wanted to point out our runner beans, arugula, sorrel, cherry bushes, apple and plum trees, but I bit my tongue and laughed about it later.
It just goes to show that edibles can be just as beautiful as an ornamental!
Amy says
I love this story – your edible landscape is obviously amazing! Thanks for sharing, it gave me a smile 🙂
Margaret says
I just love this idea. I think it’d be really great if more people had the same ideas as you! Lawn is so boring and takes so much water to keep nice and green. Here in SE Montana it’s starting to get dry and brown. I’d much rather see a lively edible garden out my window and use the water on that!
Amy says
Agreed 🙂
Stacey Summitt-Mann says
Thanks for this great post! I just love your blog and have been doing a lot of back-reading. I have a beautiful serviceberry tree in the backyard, and want to add plants under it. I love the look of the spiral around a tree. Soil conditions are heavier clay, protected by wind, and sun ~6-7 hours in the spring, though dappled at times. Do you have suggestions?
Amy says
Great question. I like to underplant my fruit-bearing trees with plants that are not only beautiful, but also provide fertilizer, attract beneficial insects, and deter pests. Some examples are bee balm, borage, comfrey, garlic chives, oregano, white clover, and yarrow.
Combining herbs and trees in this way can be called a guild. You might like to read about my cherry tree guild.
Best wishes, and let me know what you try 🙂
Stacey says
Thanks! I was looking to transplant bee balm and yarrow, so that will be perfect. I also have horseradish, which I think would work well? Any concerns with dogs in the yard? Is there an appropriate method to the spiral around a tree or is it mainly aesthetics?
Amy says
The “spiral” around the tree is called the drip line. It marks the mature size of a tree, and the area inside which the tree leaves will “drip” after a rain. Tree roots are expected to reach as wide as the drip line, and in most cases, they probably reach even further. Keeping this area free of grass will reduce competition with the tree roots for nutrients. Planting other beneficial plants underneath the tree will help the tree grow.
I don’t have experience with growing horseradish under trees, but it does have a tendency to spread, so be sure you like where you plant it and have a plan to contain it.
For dogs you won’t want to plant anything edible under the trees unless you fence it off. If your dog is a chewer, you might look into common garden plants that are toxic to dogs and be sure to fence those off if you grow any of them. Comfrey, for example, is excellent to plant under fruit trees, but if eaten in excess can be toxic to dogs.
Robin Stewart says
HI! Love it!! You have done a beautiful job!! I also do edible landscaping like this. I am doing a presentation to the local garden club. Do you mind if I use some of your pictures? The arrows are very helpful!
This will be my fourth year. I am planning to expand to the back yard this summer with larger trees and shrubs. I know what you are talking about regarding meeting people walking by. I’ve even stopped traffic!! People get upset about city ordinances or HOAs but if you do it beautifully no one complains. (especially if you share strawberries!)
You asked about favorite combinations.
I like using less familiar veggies in this design, they are less identifiable and I love the surprised look when I tell them that about 80% is food! I also like obelisks for beans or cucumbers. Okra blossoms are stunning. I did learn not to plant broccoli too near the birdfeeder. I like purple iris and chive blossoms in the same area. They bloom at the same time. My currant bush was LOADED last year. I hope she does that again! My coneflowers near the strawberries and are nice. I have a beautiful Ragusa Rose that gets one beautiful flush of flowers before the Japanese beetle battle begins. I made some rose sugar with the petals. Lemonade with rose sugar is amazing. Lavender too! Celery provides green and structure and you don’t have a bear spot. I just go out and cut off what I need. Same with lettuces, swiss chard, or collard greens. I planted carrots under the collards last year. I like garlic chives in front of daisies. Lemon grass likes quite a bit of water so I planted it next to the rain chain. Parsley reseeds like mad. I will likely not ever replant parsley. Nor chamomile, oregano, mint, or thyme. My grandfather had a rhubarb farm and I have some of them. They are priceless to me.
Hope I’m not rambling too much. I just love gardening this way! I could spend morning till night ‘working’ is the garden. So nice to “meet” you. Can’t wait for the newsletter!
Amy says
Your yard sounds stunning! I had always intended to add obelisks to my front yard but then I had a spending freeze on the gardening budget, LOL. Great idea to put the lemon grass next to the rain chain.
Thanks for stopping by! You’re welcome to use my pictures with attribution 🙂
Susan says
What an amazing transformation! I love the idea of combining dill and cosmos, not to mention the chard and alyssum. I also plan to prepare the front yard this year for a major redesign. If I were to buy only one edible landscaping design book (I am on a tight budget), what would you recommend?
PS. Looking forward for your next informative newsletter each time 🙂
Amy says
Oh, boy: ONE book? That’s a toughie, but if I could only pick just one…The Edible Front Yard.
Susan says
Thank you so much for your recommendation! The Edible Front Yard has just made it to the top of my list 🙂
Autumn says
I love this post, that you’ve taken what you do have and made it beautiful to the eye and beneficial for the health! We are hoping to buy land in the next few years and I would love to have a herb garden like this outside the kitchen door…instead of lawn. Will be looking at more of your writings!
Deborah says
Thank you for sharing your story. Just an FYI, though, all grass is edible. It may not bring you as much joy, but yes, you can eat your lawn.
Suzie says
Good morning Amy and the USA?!
I loved this posting – so interesting and so obvious when you ‘wake-up’ to edible gardens.
Also, loved the spelling mistake from one fan….”bear” patches!!!
What with children, dogs, deer and now BEARS, you sure have your sustainability work cut out!
Off to rip out my lawn now (only kidding) here in Wiltshire, England. Thank you.
DavetteB says
Love this! I had read several articles where homeowners were planting gardens in the front yard and getting sited by the homeowners or civic association because they were eyesores. I think if they looked like yours they wouldn’t have been in trouble 😉
Someday, I will have a house where I can garden; settling for a few pots on the patio and the patch of yard in front (fortunately the apt. manager doesn’t mind as long as you don’t dig up anything).
justyna says
this is what i`m struggling with right now – creating a garden. but my biggest problem is pets – one of my dogs is something between a tornado and a bulldozer. also it`s a ‘he’ so he pees absolutely on everything. i guess i`ll have to put most of my plants in really high raised beds – although my cats jump into everything and consider it a wonderful new toilet… but i`m trying! i love the idea of having plants that are not only beautiful – but they can also feed me (without pesticides and other chemicals).
Trish says
Wow wow wow! I’m ready to rip out and replace my front yard to do this! Beautiful, functional, fun. Question for you: do you find it hard to keep up with harvesting everything when you have this much? Do you let some stuff go to seed?
Amy says
I wouldn’t recommend ripping out the entire front yard all at once. I didn’t. I replaced bits and pieces at a time, as I found time and felt confident in managing more. I don’t plant alot of vegetables in the front, so there isn’t much that can go to seed except flowers.