The Foodscape Revolution. Brie Arthur

FOODSCAPING is the logical integration of edibles in a traditional ornamental landscape. In other words, to foodscape is to grow food alongside your flowers, within the landscape that already exists. It is a design and growing strategy that makes the most of the square footage in every landscape. I’m not suggesting everyone “become a farmer” by digging up the front yard – far from it. Through foodscaping, you can harness the sunny open mulch space that’s already in a prime spot and add your favorite edibles like kale, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, lettuce and carrots. The average suburban foundation landscape – the landscape around the house – offers open space the equivalent of 1,250 sq ft, or 48 average-sized 4x8 raised beds. That’s a lot of edible potential! While an urban house on a small lot may offer less planting space, any sunny area can be foodscaped, even if you’re living in a townhome or condo with only a deck or front porch.

Foundation landscapes should incorporate a beautiful mix of native ornamental plants, such as pink muhly grass and tender edibles like lemongrass.

In North Carolina where I live, builders cannot close on a new housing development without planning for developed space around each home, which means every homeowner (or renter) has a ready-made plot of land likely suitable for growing food, along with ornamental plants. This open space often has irrigation installed or, at the very least, is close to a water source. This is ideal for the foodscaper, since the closer to your home you can grow vegetables, the better you’ll be able to care for them.

You might be asking, But what if I don’t want to make a longterm commitment? That’s the beauty of foodscaping: If life gets in the way one year and you didn’t get those annual veggies in the ground, you don’t have to worry about having an empty garden space for weeds to take over. You’ll always have the shrubs, perennials and trees that were already there. Go ahead and enjoy them until you can get back to planting your edibles again.

“I’ll Never Buy Lettuce Again”

My foodscaping story started when I was in college. Once a week I’d treat myself to lunch at the café down the street from the Horticulture building on campus. The café had the most delicious mac and cheese and pre-made salads. Unfortunately, one fateful day I got sick. Like, really sick. What I thought was the flu turned out to be E. coli from one of those salads. (Since then, I try to only eat lettuce I have grown, washed and prepared.)

Lettuce was my first “crop,” and I grew it on my windowsill. A 99-cent investment provided enough seeds to grow and eat salad for six months. A few years into school, I moved out into “the county” with a group of fellow students. We lived on a hog farm and gardened in a plot the farmer had tilled for us. We wanted to grow completely organically but we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. For one thing, we planted 300 cauliflowers but wouldn’t treat them with anything chemical. (We didn’t know that the natural pest control Bt, Bacillus thuringiensis, was perfectly legitimate and harmless.) Well, I cooked that cauliflower for hours and then made soup that was infested with cabbage worms! The sad part of that story is that here we were, going to school for horticulture, and all we were learning about was designing with and planting ornamentals – not about the wide, wide world of edible plants.

Homegrown lettuce in the setting sun

Fresh, organic lettuce grown in my foodscape is served year-round.

After my first cabbage worm experience as a young horticulture student, I’ve learned how to grow cruciferous vegetables without the extra “protein.” This kohlrabi grows along a property border with colorful foliage edibles like Perilla and ornamental elephant ears (Colocasia esculentes ‘Black Runner’).

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