Growing Curb Appeal: Food From the Front Yard

Parked neatly in front of her Bay Area suburban ranch home is an electric vehicle with a single bumper sticker that reads “Food Not Lawns.” To the left, Rosalind Creasy—a nationally acclaimed garden and food writer, photographer, and landscape designer—keeps her inviting Los Altos front yard tastefully blooming and landscaped with the unexpected: a profusion of fruits and vegetables.

There are no uniform rows or large raised beds, or signs of the farm tools and irrigation lines typical of designated areas for backyard gardens. Instead, it’s a planned outdoor living space filled with the bountiful beauty of plants and flowers in a dazzling edible tapestry weaving across her front yard.

Small orange squash dangle from an archway ready to be picked. Artichoke plants stand like silver-green sentinels on the border near the street. Large bright-blue painted containers are filled with towers of blueberries or show off the green leafy tops of the purple potatoes below.

A series of paths and small outcroppings of spaces lead visitors in this front yard garden of wonder. Flowers attracting bees and other beneficial insects mix and mingle with planted vignettes of seasonal radishes, lettuce and herbs. A flowering vine intertwines its blossoms alongside an arbor of cherry tomatoes dangling bright ripe fruit from one of three arbors visible from this section of the lot. A dwarf Gala apple tree colorfully graces the side of the driveway, and the smell of rosemary fills the air from the fire-engine-red garden bench that invites you to sit and enjoy the view. 

From the street it is a stunning picture and gives the passerby a first taste of the mix and artistry that is possible with edible landscaping. Through a welcoming arch you step onto a brick pathway that leads into an array of vegetables, fruits, flowers, vines, trees and hardscape artfully balanced together on this standard-sized suburban front yard.

This is a front yard that breaks the rules and opens up possibilities for rethinking how to grow, enjoy and benefit from edible landscaping.

And Rosalind Creasy is a rule breaker.

She tore out her front lawn in the 1970s and transformed it into a revolving demonstration garden and showpiece for her life’s work: promoting and educating people on the endless possibilities and visual appeal of planning and planting edibles, with delicious results.

“I used to change it completely with a different theme every year. In the last few years, I tend to plant, grow and enjoy my favorites.” In pots and spaces normally reserved for shade trees, mowed lawns and common shrubs, or today’s rock gardens, Rosalind eats with the seasons and conjures up some of the best-tasting produce and cuisine. She also isn’t wasting any H2O on plants that don’t have value, following a simple philosophy: “If you water it and have soil for it, then eat from it.”

Using rotating themes and bringing back heirloom varieties from around the world, Rosalind has been able to showcase landscape design—both formal and informal—and photograph it for her books and recipes. Her first book, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, published in 1982, is considered a watershed for home gardeners and landscapers who had never put the words “design” or “beauty” in the same sentence—at least not when describing plans for their backyard garden beds. Rosalind’s book, and its many updated editions, translate traditional landscape approaches, often designed around look and functionality, and match them with edible plantings so you can “have a gorgeous garden and eat it too.”