Tackling the Front Yard

April 2012 -- Yikes. 

When we moved in to our house a year ago, I was excited to have the backyard full of promise. I was less thrilled about our front yard. It is halfway covered by a huge flower bed, which is shaded most of the time and poorly kept. A good portion of the bed was bare (but for the weeds) and the rest was full of a haphazard arrangement of trees. There was also a huge hole for no apparent reason.

Now, I knew that I needed to do something with the front yard, so I kept it trimmed and filled the big hole with some Wandering Jew that I pirated from my parents' yard. I enjoyed the sudden growth of turmeric (as I have mentioned in a previous post) through the summer. As fall approached, I put in some pansies that I found on sale at the hardware store. But the front yard just didn't enchant me, as I was pretty convinced that I couldn't grow anything tasty in it because we have an HOA and places with HOAs frown on growing veggies in the front yard. WELL! I did some research, and according to our deed restrictions, we CAN have veggies anywhere we want, as long as they "blend with existing landscaping." Challenge accepted.

March 2013

I have recently become enamored with the concept of "Edible Landscaping" and Rosalind Creasy is my new hero. She pioneered the concept of having beautiful, edible plants as a decorative part of the landscaping, rather than just in utilitarian rows in a setting that screams "farm." She points out that you probably can't get away with having rows of corn in your front yard (although that's still a better use of land and water resources than useless lawn) but there are a lot of ways to make your (veggie) garden beautiful, and in doing so, keep the HOA off your back.

April 2013

Once I got it in my head to incorporate beautiful plants that you can eat with ones you can't, I started seeing the endless possibilities of the front yard. The plan I'd always had was a blend of purple and green, so I started with some Royal Burgundy beans that have dark green leaves, purple flowers, and long, purple bean pods. I added some asparagus fern (also pirated) and leafy lettuce to add a bright green to the mix. I thought I should add something else non-edible to balance out the fact that I was actually growing beans in the front yard, so I planted some caladium bulbs that came up a pretty white and green. (I have a fond attachment to caladiums, as I was given one small plant at a nursery when I was a young child, and it was MINE. Mom allowed me to stick it in the flower bed waaaaay in the back, and it flourished. I took great pride in this little caladium and it is still alive today, two decades later, hiding behind all of Mom's other landscaping.)

This is not (nor will it probably ever be) a finished project, but I feel much better about how it's looking so far. I'll keep posting the changes I make.