Creating front yard gardens… benefits & challenges
Imagine this: You are a mother, pushing a stroller up a hill, with your other small children following slowly behind. It is a hot July day in Nova Scotia, the sun is sizzling, the humidity is high, and you are bringing your children back from the park. As you come to the top of the hill, you reach that house. A copper beech tree extends its branches over the sidewalk and the little stone wall edging the house’s garden. Your children eagerly clamber up on the low wall for a bit of a rest in the shade. Behind you, beyond the tree, a mix of hardy roses jumble with herbs, hollyhocks, and Daisies in the sunny part of the yard. A grapevine, hardy kiwi, and climbing roses engulf the chainlink fence. The air is buzzing with bees and happy insects: this garden is a delight for all creatures. This is the image I keep in my mind as I work on my front yard garden.
Currently, it is late fall, and my front yard 'garden' is hardly that: it is, well, kind of a mess! A thick layer of cardboard, newspaper, leaf mulch and compost cover the front yard, smothering the grass and preparing the soil for the future garden of Eden in my mind's eye. Whenever I am out working on the front garden, the odd passerby asks what on earth I am doing. Some neighbors ask why I am covering up a perfectly good lawn with cardboard. I tell everyone I am a flower fanatic and am planning to fill the front yard up with flowers!
Benefits to Front yard gardens
The opposite of The broken window effect
Have you heard of the broken window theory? This theory is that lingering visible evidence of crime encourages more crime. Conversely, Front yard gardens encourage beauty, fragrance, and nature, which contribute to better and happier communities.
Add pleasure to your neighbours day
People who walk by your front yard garden will get to enjoy flowers, scents, and nature, or relax in the shade of your tree — what a gift to your community. We make a front yard garden in service to insects and people.
Front yard gardens use less water and fewer resources If planted correctly to your location and condition, front yard gardens can require very little water, fertilizer, or other resources in comparison to a conventional lawn.
Easy care gardens take much less time, and money than lawn
Devotees of front yard gardens say that easy care gardens take much less time than weekly lawn mowing, fertilizing, and weeding.
Add value and curb appeal to your home
A front yard garden adds all-season interest and beauty to your home.
Help pollinators, birds, and wildlife
Studies have shown that even the smallest gardens help contribute to the survival of these important creatures.
Increased community
Gardening in your front yard will ensure you meet your neighbours and members of your community. Perhaps even encourage some new front yard gardeners!
It can be a bit of a challenge to create a front yard garden, not that the gardening in of itself is different or is any more complicated, of course - but the location does make a difference. Why is this? I have thought about it (while spreading compost and cardboard on my front yard!), and I believe a few elements and even obstacles come into play once we start gardening ‘out front.’
Difficulties and barriers to creating a front yard garden
Visibility! The standard house in North America is fronted by a patch of grass, perhaps with a few shrubs around the foundation of the house. The neighbors have the same, and so does the house next door. Once a gardener sets foot out the front door, he or she is, for lack of a better term, on display to the neighbourhood! Add to this pedestrian or vehicle traffic, and gardening in the front yard could become quite a moment of social interaction…. Which can nearly lead to a feeling of performance anxiety! While this point would be inconsequential for the bold, outgoing gardener, a shy gardener could feel some real displeasure at the lack of privacy. One shy gardener I know said she was very interested in filling her sunny but highly trafficked corner lot with flowers but simply felt too uncomfortable outside her high wooden fence where "everyone can see her!"
Adverse growing conditions: Most frequently, front yards are a bland rectangle of hard-baked grass. In an older house, decades of lawn monoculture tends to create a rock hard, infertile, and uninspiring landscape. A new home may be fronted with inadequate conditions due to building refuse in the soil, compacted earth from vehicle traffic, and endless sod.
Deer and other critters: If deer, rabbits, and other critters are a concern for you and your neighbouring gardeners, a front yard garden might be easier to access by the hungry four-legged crowd.
Pollution and city life: City front yard gardeners will need to keep in mind that the front yard is potentially subject to the worst urban life can deliver. These urban front yard issues can include towering snow mountains from snowplows, excess winter salt, pollution, garbage, visits from canine neighbours, and, of course, people.
Breaking the norm. A front yard garden has become synonymous with a horticultural revolution in some circles. Front yard gardens are touted as a revolt against old-fashioned ideals, staid lawn monoculture, food insecurity, garden over-neatness, pollinator decline, and other timely issues. Some people genuinely enjoy a pristine verdant lawn carpeting the front of every house on the street and thus are surprised or unimpressed at the notion of the front yard jungle. In some communities, maintaining a pristine lawn is part of the bylaws of the homeowner's associations. Whether your motives as a front yard gardener are revolutionary or merely looking for more garden space, be prepared to be breaking the norm!
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Happy front yard gardening!