Have you considered having an edible landscape? For many homeowners, the dream is to have a beautiful front yard with fantastic curb appeal. The issue is that many of us want also to have gardens, which sometimes aren’t the most beautiful. Wouldn’t having a front-yard filled with only edible plants would be great? Having an edible landscape has become one of my personal gardening goals and one of the main reasons I pulled out the ugly bushes the builder originally planted decades ago. Those ugly bushes were replaced with blueberry bushes.
The issue is that I still have a large area where I need to plant more flowers or something interesting this spring. As I was researching various options, I had the opportunity to review the perfect book for my situation – Growing an Edible Landscape: How to Transform Your Outdoor Space Into a Food Garden by Gary Pilarkchik and Chiara D’Amore. After going through this new book, I couldn’t wait to share it with everyone!
Growing an Edible Landscape: What Is It
Are you looking for a book to help create the perfect edible garden in your front yard? If so, we think you will love Growing an Edible Landscape: How to Transform Your Outdoor Space Into a Food Garden. Here is what the publisher has to say about this new book.
Convert your unproductive lawn and landscape areas into fruitful edible gardens with this practical guide overflowing with ideas, plans, designs, and know-how.
Out with the lawn and in with the food! That’s the battle cry of millions of modern gardeners who are not only looking to reduce the amount of time and energy they have to spend tending a lawn, but they’re also looking to improve the lives of their family, friends, and neighbors by supplying them with fresh, homegrown food. In the United States alone, 46 million acres of land are covered in turfgrass (that’s more acreage than corn and soybeans combined!). Imagine all the good that would come if that land were dedicated to growing food instead!
Converting unused areas of the landscape into food gardens helps mitigate the effects of climate change, reduces food miles, improves food security, and allows us to be a better steward of our little slice of the planet. But how do you get started? Which plants do you choose? Is there a series of best practices to follow to successfully convert your yard into an edible oasis so that it’s not just high-yielding, but it’s also attractive? Growing an Edible Landscape is here to help answer all of these questions and many more.
Setting up an edible landscape is much more than just placing a few tomato-filled raised beds in the middle of the lawn, though for some gardeners, this might be a logical place to start. The eventual goal, however, is to have a landscape filled with layers of fruitful plants combined together to produce edible harvests for as many months of the year as possible. To reach that end, there’s much to plan and do to ensure your success.
Authors Gary Pilarchik of @therustedgarden and Dr. Chiara D’Amore have devised the perfect guidebook to take you from “turfgrass overwhelm” to consistent harvests of a huge diversity of homegrown edible plants. And the best part is—you can create an edible paradise whether your yard is large or small, sunny or shaded, urban or rural, or level or sloped.
Our Thoughts
As someone passionate about growing their food, I have to say I am in love with Growing an Edible Landscape: How to Transform Your Outdoor Space Into a Food Garden. This book is filled with amazing pictures and has some of the most useful charts and graphics I have seen in a gardening book in years. This is one of those reference books you don’t just keep on the shelf for specific information, but something you genuinely want to read entirely through with all the fantastic information, not to mention gorgeous pictures. As someone who considered themselves an experienced gardener, I learned something from each section, which is truly a rarity with all the books I have read on gardening. While the book focuses mainly on edible landscapes, it also has some fantastic garden design and planning information, making it a realistic option for front-yard edible gardening. This is definitely a book I will use this spring to improve my front yard and increase my consumption of edible plants.
Growing an Edible Landscape: Where to Purchase
Would you like to purchase this fantastic gardening book for yourself or a gardener in your family? You can find Growing an Edible Landscape: How to Transform Your Outdoor Space Into a Food Garden on Amazon.com for under $24.99 in paperback or your preferred Kindle device. Who knew making an edible garden could be so easy?
About Susan Bewley
Susan Bewley is a professional writer who has been writing content online & in print format for over 10 years. As well, she is an alumni of the University of Louisville with a Masters Degree in Special Education. When not working as an online business consultant or ghost writing, she can be found writing on Budget Earth, on her own novel, or working with various entities in the pet industry.