Gardens, not lawns, feed appetite for landscaping

COLUMBUS (AP) — Tidy lawns come to an abrupt halt at the front yards of two next-door neighbors.

Gone is the grass, replaced by a jumble of hot peppers, tomatoes, peas, peaches, berries and plums. And that’s just a sampling.

“What aren’t we growing?” said Kelly Sandman, who along with her neighbors dug up her front lawn in April and planted fruits and vegetables.

An increasing, albeit small, number of people are trying edible landscaping — growing fruits and vegetables mixed in with traditional, ornamental flowers — to save money on food, eat healthier and ensure their fresh food is safe.

It goes beyond the traditional garden. Broccoli and cabbage plants are popping up in flower beds once occupied by tulips and daisies. Fruit trees are replacing fences.

Some are using edible plants as fences, swapping hedges for raspberry bushes or screening backyard pools with towering stalks of sweet corn.

The idea goes back centuries to times when people sustained themselves with food they grew on their own and filled every corner of their land with edible plants. But with the mass production of food, the practice gave way to manicured lawns.

Horticulture experts and extension agents say there is now interest in returning to those roots. They’re fielding more questions about edible landscaping and seeing waiting lists for classes this summer.

“It’s a way of reinventing the landscape,” said Jack Algiere, who runs the produce operation and teaches workshops at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, N.Y.

An easy way to start is to plant a fruit tree instead of an ornamental tree. Or put some tomato or pepper plants in a flower bed.

Take it a step further and create a fence or boundary with a grape arbor or pole beans.

Judy Arnett planted tomatoes and peppers in containers to create a natural screen around her deck at her home in Hilliard, a Columbus suburb.

“By the end of summer it gives me a 4-foot wall of plants, and I can step out of my kitchen and grab a tomato,” she said.

The four neighbors in Columbus who tore up their grass were inspired after three of them took a course on permaculture, a philosophy for living with the earth and nature in a more self-sustaining way.

Their biggest worry was what their neighbors would think. Reactions ranged from stunned to curious to “Wow, this is fantastic!”