Why Food Design Is Better Than Regular Landscape Design
For most people, landscaping is purely a decorative act. We design the exterior of our homes for visual impact more than anything else, resulting in flawless lawns and colorful edging that look great (if you’re not doing it wrong ) and serve absolutely no other purpose. If you think about it for a moment, the fact that we spend significant amounts of money, time, and effort installing and maintaining plants that exist solely to enhance the look of our home is kind of wasteful.
Recently, an alternative to traditional landscaping around your home has emerged: food scaping . It’s a pretty simple concept: instead of a bunch of plants that look pretty but serve no other function, use edible plants — like vegetables, edible flowers, fruit and nut trees, and herbs — to create great landscaping that’s also functional and environmentally friendly. clean. beneficial.
Benefits of Foodscaping
Food design has many advantages over traditional landscaping:
- Food. The whole point of food scaping is that your landscaping produces fresh, organic produce that you and your family can enjoy.
- Money. Growing your own food can save you some money at the grocery store—at least a few hundred dollars a year .
- Water. Lawns and other landscaping elements can be incredibly coveted decorations. Foodscaping, on the other hand, can significantly reduce your water intake .
- Wednesday. You will reduce your environmental impact in other ways: less trips to the store and less packaging waste.
While many people feel that vegetables lack the visual beauty of more traditional landscaping plants, it’s actually not that hard to create an edible food landscape that has all the wow factor you need.
How to start foodscaping
One of the most important aspects of food scaping is that it is not a monolithic all-or-nothing concept. If you already have a landscape design that you’ve invested time and money in, or you’re unsure if food design will work as you hope, you can start small. For example, you can just plant some edible borders – lettuce is great for this , but any relatively low maintenance plant can work as a border, and if you start with a border, you won’t need to dig or worry about existing landscape. that you have just ruined the attractiveness of your home.
Whether you’re planning to start small or go all out and turn your yard spaces into buzzing food factories, actually designing food is as easy as planting what you can eat instead of what you can’t. Here is a quick guide to getting started:
- Start with food that you enjoy. The whole point of food scaping is to make the landscape more rewarding; there is no point in growing what you won’t eat. Think about the vegetables that are staples in your diet and start there. You can check the All-America Selections database to see varieties that do well in gardens across America. Of course, you need to know which USDA zone you are in and which plants will grow well in your climate .
- Apply the same design principles. It’s really a myth that edible plants and vegetables have to be ugly. Once you have a short list of the foods you will actually eat, you can create a landscape that includes color and size just like more traditional landscape design. And there are no rules here – you can mix edible and non-edible plants in your design if that’s the only way to achieve your aesthetic goals. You will still get some of the economic and environmental benefits of foodscaping, and you can always expand your foodscape footprint later.
- Remember that most edible plants are annuals. You might want to mix in some perennials for year-round coverage to anchor your landscape, but most of the food you’ll be growing in your food landscape will be annuals. This means there are no insurmountable obligations: if you don’t like how it turned out, or if you feel like you’ve chosen the wrong foods to grow, just plant something else next year.
- Think utilitarian. Plants that grow as vines, such as melons or even tomatoes, can be used for fencing to create beautiful barriers. Artichokes grow quite tall and have beautiful flowers, making them a great choice for bright colors. Strawberries can make an excellent groundcover.
Other considerations
Before you dive into food scaping, the last aspect to consider is local regulations, especially Home Owners Association (HOA) regulations if they apply to your home. Some homeowners’ associations are very strict about front yard vegetables, so make sure you don’t incur penalties if you decide to go into food design.
You should also consider taking some steps to protect your foodscape from local critters who see it as a free buffet. There are many ways to keep animals from your crops that don’t involve death and cruelty, from planting mint or garlic (which many animals avoid) to sound and invisible fences, but it’s best to think about this before you wake up. One day you will find that some local animals have a party in your yard.