Uncle Tom’s vegetable garden takes over the front yard! Go, go! Once, in Santa Cruz, I decided to stop worrying about all the tourists (those dreadful garden pests) picking flowers from my narrow strip of a front garden and to indulge them instead.
The garden sat up about five feet from the sidewalk, hemmed in by a concrete retaining wall, so the flowers were at eye level to people on the sidewalk and quite tempting. So I planted Sungold cherry tomatoes and let them cascade down the wall. They loved the heat, and the tourists were welcome to the fruit. It worked–they seemed to leave everything else alone.
I think there’s something glorious about planting fruit and vegetables in the front yard for the world to see. Let the neighbors nibble a bit–if you re-imagine the front yard as a place to share the bounty that is otherwise confined to the back, it becomes a much more generous, convivial space.