Front gardens

Edible Estates

Have we convinced you yet that there are better things to do with the water, equipment, fuel, energy and pesticides that go into maintaining a traditional lawn? If we haven't, add this voice into the mix: Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn by Fritz Haeg. This expanded second edition won't overwhelm you with how-to minutiae or examples of perfection you could never hope to achieve on your own. Instead, you get a steady stream of inspiration: region-by-region prototypes, planting calendars, yes, but also full-blown essays by sustainability supporters such as Michael Pollan and Lesley Stern.

"By attacking the front lawn," writes the author, "an essential icon of the American Dream, my hope is to ignite a chain reaction of thoughts that question other antiquated conventions of home, street, neighborhood, city, and global networks that we take for granted. If we see that our neighbor’s typical lawn instead can be a beautiful food garden, perhaps we begin to look at the city around us with new eyes. The seemingly inevitable urban structures begin to unravel as we recognize that we have a choice about how we want to live and what we want to do with the places we have inherited from previous generations. No matter what has been handed to us, each of us should be given license to be an active part in the creation of the cities that we share, and in the process, our private land can be a public model for the world in which we would like to live."

Will we be able to overcome our American preoccupation with lawns that project the right image to the neighbors? It's a major shift for many—but perhaps planting a book like Edible Estates on your neighbor's coffee table might inspire more fruitful plantings in the front yard.

My garden out of necessity is in my front yard. And the lawn spaces are not what my neighbors would call grass. Think moss, dandelions, violets...

Hey I like it.