Front gardens: looks vs food

[Thomzo]

My current house faces north and onto a very busy main road so I won't plant any food crops as they won't grow well and they'll get covered in petrol fumes. But in previous houses I have planted all sorts in front gardens.

Try lavender. Loads of great uses and no-one is going to complain. You could make a knot garden using lavender and rosemary and your trimmed fruit bushes and then fill in between with the various vegetables mentioned above.

I would definitely go for herbs as they are so pretty and will smell nice as you come home. A bay tree makes a lovely feature as you can trim it into a nice shape.

Do you have space for a small tree? What about a crab apple or something that isn't immediately edible so won't attract attention from the local scrumpers.

And don't forget flowers for cutting. Just as valuable as vegetables, they attract good insects.

Zoe

[burek]

have lettuces, spinach, nasturtium, sunflowers, and various herbs growing in our front garden. Main reason for planting the lettuces and spinach there was to remind me to pick them when I get home from work and eat them before they go to seed!
Nobody walks past up here so that isn't an issue - my main problem is the chickens getting at them. I solve it with chicken wire but I personally find it so ugly!

[yugogypsy]

I have a huge front garden and often when Rick and I are weeding we get positive comments on it from people walking by.

Its far more productive than the blackberry patch that preceded it ever was, and it was impossible to keep mowed as its not level, so we turned it into garden and people seem to like it.

I guess it all depends on where you live, I'm in a rural area and so its not a to people.

Also we're in an agricultural area, so that helps, everything from dairy farms to vineyards in a 5 mile circle around us.

Lois

[PaulDavidSumner]

Thanks everyone, a lot of good ideas there for me to ponder in the months ahead, some of which confirmed my own thinking but a lot of ideas I had not previously thought of. What is most encouraging is the number of readers who are already doing exactly what I had in mind, instead of thinking that the back garden is for food and the front garden 'just has to look neat'. It all goes to show that having a decent-sized house with 2 gardens and paths at the side gives a huge amount of food-growing potential!

[contadino]

I thought I'd already posted on this thread, but can't see it so here goes again...!

I saw a front garden in France a year or so ago, and I think that with the exception of a couple of big pine trees, the whole thing was edible. They had an amazing collection of purple cabbages and broccoli, all the usual herbs (rosemary, sage, lavendar, thyme, etc..), the leaf veg (chard, spinach, etc..), carrots, fennel, etc. Somehow they had planted it up so that it wasn't particularly eye-catching. If fact, the only reason I spotted it was that I was at the time particularly interested in other people's gardens. There were no rows of one type of plant - just a single fennel here and another one over there, etc.. Small patches of carrots in different locations, cabbages dotted around the place. I figured that it was more work to maintain, but probably doubled the owners crop (I couldn't see how big is back garden was.) It struck me that none of the produce was particularly eye-catching, but if you looked around there was loads there.