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Eat Your Lawn
A new wave of gardeners replants front yards with food
A mile from the White House, in Washington DC’s Columbia Heights neighborhood, Ed Bruske is growing vegetables where his lawn used to be. After 9/11, the Washington Post reporter–turned–freelance food journalist and his wife felt a need to have deeper relationships with friends and family. “We found that we could connect with [them] through food,” he says. This evolved into regular Sunday suppers. “We started to eyeball the property in front of the house, and I thought if we were going to get serious about what we were eating, then we should grow our own food.”
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Bruske has no backyard. “In the city, sometimes the front yard is the only place you can garden,” he says. “So I went out and started digging in the yard.”
During the summer, the garden provides about 80 percent of the produce Bruske, his wife, and their eight-year-old daughter eat. It’s planted with tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, Italian flat beans, okra, and other vegetables. Despite the bounty, Bruske admits his daughter “would much rather be eating soup out of a can.” Their winter garden provides fewer things, like turnips and greens. “Our hope is to do a much better job planning as the fall approaches and have things to store away and eat.”
Farm at Your Front Door
Bruske isn’t the only person tearing up his front yard to make room for fruits and vegetables. The idea of “edible lawns” has gained traction over the last few years, as more people have become concerned about food security and quality and eating locally. The national organization Food Not Lawns, founded in 1999, is a resource for people wanting to transform front yards and underutilized spaces into food. It hosts workshops on everything from how to convince the neighbors that a lawn conversion is a good idea to gardening techniques such as permaculture. Following on the heels of cofounder Heather Flores’s book by the same name, the organization has grown from 10 chapters in 2006 to 30 chapters in states as diverse as Florida and Washington. It offers programs like tool sharing and seed swaps.
“I hope [the growth] is exponential,” says Flores. “It seems like it makes sense. We’re only a couple generations removed from when everyone who had property grew some food on it.”
I'm thrilled to see this!
Ever since I read a little article 10 years ago about using veggies as ornamental plantings--carrots for a feathery texture, groupings of lettuces in various shades, etc--I have dreamed of my house with the edible, non-mowable, organically-grown yard. With my son came the dream of a playscape; not a set from the store, but a little fishpond, a hill to slide down, trees to climb and bushes to hide behind. He's 5 now and we still don't own our own house yet *sigh*. It looks like we might in another 2 years, but I've been saying that since before he was born. I've taken note of the organization, and will be examining the yard's possibilities for planting and the neighborhoods "weed" ordinance right along with the house's foundation and heating system (actually, I'd love geothermal--as long as we're bulldozing). Thanks for the info!
This is a really appealing idea, but being the bourgeois suburbanite that I am, I'd be concerned about what it looks like in the "off-season." It's one thing in my fenced *back* yard, but quite another smack in the front, kwim? In the mid-Atlantic, that could be a lot of months of annoying the neighbors. Maybe they just decorate the hell out of the open space with reindeer and red ribbons and pine cones and leave it up October through April. :-)
can't say as brown lawns are that attractive either. Here in the high plains where I live, grass is still brown, but peas, herbs, carrots and lots of other yummies are already up and growing, some things close to harvest already.
I wouldn't want Christmas decorations in my October pumpkin patch, or in the way of turnips, squash, and potatoes ripening for Thanksgiving dinner. And April is far too late to get going on things that shoot up in hot weather, like spinach and lettuces.
As for open space--the best way to keep soil fertile is to rotate crops--plant different things in the same space in different seasons, as well as companion planting.
Edible Landscaping has been going on in California since the early 80's. The milder weather enables year-round growing. Rosalind Creasy has written several books and is considered a pioneer in the area of community acceptance of front-yard gardening. Anyone wishing more info on that aspect would find it with her.
I'd rip up my whole (rented) lawn if I could, but I'm taking it step-by-step. My landlord was more open than I expected to planting herbs and vegetables. Things like borage, nasturtiums, feverfew and thyme can easily be "ornamental" as well as edible, and then throwing in Violet Queen cauliflower and some leeks works out.
My husband dug up all of the ugly crabgrass in the front of our house two years ago and turned our front yard into a mini-farm. In order to address the issue of "not so pretty in the off-season" he built a series of planter boxes in interesting shapes, used colored stones and pavers to create paths between the boxes, added some large pots and put in some non-vegetable plants that grow year-round to keep things from looking too barren. We're lucky that where we live, we can still grown some vegetables during the colder months. (BTW--He's no farmer, just a guy who plans well and doesn't mind some heavy lifting.) The best part is that he got to know just about everyone in the neighborhood while working on this project. He managed to grow tomato plants that went above our roof line, which generated lots of interest. He also puts out periodic boxes of free produce so people could help themselves. We've had people leave jars of homemade salsa or chutney on our front porch with a thank you note. It's the best thing we've done since moving to the neighborhood six years ago.
Thank you for this article! I used it to help convince my husband to rip out some hideous shrubs in front of our house and replant the beds with perennial veggies - I think we are going to do asparagus & artichokes, interspersed with some flowers than will come up later in the summer so it's not bare the rest of the season.
Be careful to test your soil if you're growing produce -- the ground around older houses is apt to be full of lead from the generations of people painting and scraping the house.
If you find lead or heavy metals in the soil, you'll need to do raised beds or container gardens.
Good luck with your cities Code Enforcement Gestapo. Anything that doesn't look like lawn or dirt around here gets written up as a 'weed abatement' notice.
If you expect to be in place for some years, plant rhubarb. You dig a big hole, put in some manure, and add rhubarb roots, and after a year or so you will get rhubarb every year for fifty years. Over time, rhubarb forms a roundish stand of dark green leaves with pretty pink stems, and 3-4 stems make a pie or a nice dish of stewed rhubarb.Or you can strew the roots along a property line to make a hedge. It's pretty attractive and very useful. Freezes, too.
to add to the "be careful" file--I was in the nursery business for years while very harsh chemicals were still sold to consumers. (now you can't get some of them even with a pest-control applicator's license)
I can't tell you how many quarts and yes, GALLONS, of Chlordane were sold in California for home-owner applied termite control. This chemical has a very ong half-life in soil, and it was applied as a perimeter soil drench. Trenches were dug around the foundation of a home and a dilution of Chlordane was applied as a liquid drench.
It kept termites from moving from the soil into the foundation and up the walls of a structure, but also is still persistant in the soils years later.
So Be Careful about growing anything edible next to, or even NEAR the foundation of a home built before the 1990's. Out on the yard away from a structure is still your best bet.
I would think that you would have mentioned getting your soil tested before gowing anything in your front lawn. Wouldn't that be important considering all the chemicals and other pollutants that are found in urban landscapes? Just a suggestion.
I was just going to ask about that. Anyone know who to call to get your soil tested? fayefood.com
Your community or County should have a USDA or state extension agent/office(s) who can help you locate a soil testing resource. Also, check out your state's land grant university's website, they should have resources as well not just for soil testing for contaminants, but PH, soil characteristics (you may need to amend soil for successful food production) a well as suggestions for varieties and sources of plants that will do well in your location.
For example, the west side of our town can grow stuff that the east side can't because of differences in soil PH. Well, you can do it, but you have to add a small semi-load of acid soil amendments like ground pine mulch or peat. So you want to work with what you have rather than fight it. don't just look at the Zone map, it will tell you cold hardiness but it won't tell you heat tolerance and night temps. For example, tomatoes will stop growing or producing if it stays too hot during the night and we can't grow a lot of produce because it NEVER cools off enough for long enough to set fruit,,,ever. We just have to start early, and then work on fall gardens.
I'm a big fan of having landscaping that pulls it's weight - blackberry shrubs in the yard against the fence, replace the ornamental vines with grapes to trelis on the gazebo, and I'm hoping to get some pomengranant (sp) shrubs in this year. Hey at least we've finally gotten day time temps down under 100 and it's getting down to 80 at night. that's a big improvement..