Why not more vegetables?

My morning walk takes an occasional loop through a new neighborhood, not far from our established one. Developed on the site of a series of old horse pastures, it supported grasses and forbs with large trees on the perimeter. Currently, there are 4 completed houses with inhabitants, two houses for sale, and one in the final stages of construction. All quite large, of course, with expansive space around them. This is not remarkable, unfortunately, but what is fascinating (and scary) is how uncreative the landscapes are.

This is not for lack of spending money on the landscape, mind you. The rows of leyland cypresses, ornamental shrub beds, and heavily watered turf sodded in great expanses strikes me as unmodern and not forward-thinking at all. The water is streaming from overhead irrigation in the morning.

Why not add a diversity of interesting (and fast-growing) native trees to create shade instead of crepe-myrtles? Or native conifers and pine?

And where are the vegetables? One house has two tomato plants next to the garage near a sea of irrigated grass and 'foundation' plantings. I read a blog post in Garden Rant this afternoon that mentioned an article in Time magazine about Edible Estates, something I'd read about before, but I missed this article.

I love the idea of this -- I've been doing various programs (this link is one version of it) recently about creative and ornamental vegetable gardens, so I think Fritz Haeg's concept is brilliant.


We're fortunate enough to have lots of space in front and in back of our house, and the main and satellite vegetable gardens are in the backyard, but they're certainly attractive enough (in my opinion) to be out front!