Most front yards are lawn with a few shrubs by the house. Eric M did the opposite at his home in Washington. He turned the whole front yard, right down to the street, into a vegetable garden, and made it neat enough that it looks like it belongs out front.
It is a potager, the French style of kitchen garden where vegetables, herbs, and flowers grow together in a tidy layout instead of in plain rows out back. Eric calls his "an organic potager front yard garden," and at his last count it held "44 varieties of vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers."
Start with the layout, not the plants
The first photo on Eric's yard page is the one to study. The beds form a clear geometric pattern, with wood chip paths between them and a small trellis arbor at each end. Eric points to that photo himself: "The geometric layout can be seen in the first picture. In the summer, the layout creates 4 outdoor rooms, each bordered by plants."
That is the part worth copying, whatever you grow. The beds and paths come first, and they are what make a front yard vegetable garden look deliberate instead of messy. In the photos you can see roses blooming along the street edge, big leafy greens filling one bed, and vines climbing the arbors. It reads as a garden first and a food plot second.
A working garden, and he says so
Eric is upfront about the trade off. "Note: this is a working garden," he writes, "so it's not always picture perfect."
Anyone who has grown food knows what he means. Beds get harvested, plants flop, and something is always halfway grown. His photos show the garden full and green, but the layout is doing the heavy lifting on the days when the plants are not at their best. The bones look good even when the crops are in between.
Other gardeners noticed. One visitor wrote, "What a beautiful yard. It's so inviting, full of charm, just a great job of designing a front yard." A fellow Washington gardener said she was sending the photos to her husband, who had been thinking about switching from row gardening to raised beds: "I think your artistic approach will motivate him to make the switch."
Why look at this yard in November
November in Zone 7 is not planting season for most of what is in these photos, and that is exactly why this is a good yard to study right now. A potager is mostly carpentry and planning: beds to build, paths to lay out, arbors to set. That work can happen over winter, a piece at a time, so the garden is ready to plant in spring instead of being designed in a rush in April.
Three things to borrow from Eric's yard:
- Draw the beds on paper first. His four outdoor rooms only work because the layout was decided before anything was planted.
- Put the paths in early. Wood chips are cheap, easy to top up, and they keep a vegetable garden looking tidy from the street.
- Mix flowers in on purpose. Roses and edible flowers along the edges are what make this read as a front yard garden instead of a farm plot.
See more like it
- Eric's yard, all 13 photos: Front Yard Potager
- More kitchen gardens: kitchen potager ideas
- Front yards that do more than lawn: front yard ideas
- Gardens in the same climate: Zone 7 yards