Front Yard Veggie Garden by urbanwild
Landscaping a garden in your front yard whether you want to plant vegetables or flowers is enhanced by garden structures, containers and other items. It’s nice to have small garden areas and raised beds outlined with interesting rocks, but the vertical structures add interest to the landscaping and give vines a place to grow or another height for positioning plants.
Now if you are handy and can build your own structures, lucky you- there are lots of online directions. You might also be lucky to know someone who is handy who can build garden structures for you. I saw some wooden structures used for climbing pole beans at a local historical house with garden and museum. Volunteers make these structures. I asked if they would build two for me- the money I will pay for these towers will be a donation to the historical house. They agreed to doing it; but I await the approval from the people in charge.
If you aren’t that handy but can afford to buy structures, there are so many pretty ones to buy. Gardening as a hobby can be costly if one is not careful. Some of the structures that I like are very expensive- too expensive for my garden. (see here) But I love to dream and I like to get ideas, so I even look at websites that sell items outside of my financial comfort zone. Then when I see a nursery that is having sales or going out of business, I stop in to see if they have something similar I can afford. I recently treated my garden to a few rose pillars from a nursery that is closing. I also treated myself to a gazing ball that the nursery almost gave away at the price the owner charged me.
Of course, structures look fantastic in a flower garden. And if you are turning your front yard into a beautiful vegetable garden, these structures will also add that decorative dimension to your vegetable landscape, a decorative dimension that no farm ever has. ThisGardenLady cannot believe that anyone seeing your pretty vegetables planted in the beds, containers and climbing on the garden structures will ever accuse you of not having a pretty yard.
Choose vegetable vines that have interesting leaves and flowers to twine up the arbors, poles, pillars or whatever you use, even if you use chicken wire. Many vines, like squash vines, have those large interesting leaves and bright yellow or orange flowers. Then as the vegetables ripen and hang down, there is more interest with the dangling vegetables, like tromboncino squash.
Or perhaps you would like to brew beer and you would like a vine with attractive dark green, deeply lobed foliage, a perennial that grows fast and creates a screen. Then consider hops vines that have a charming flower with a lovely pine scented fragrance. (see here)
Last let me suggest pole beans. The Scarlet Runner Pole bean is ornamental as well as edible.
These are just a few suggestions for creating a front yard vegetable garden that everyone will admire and no one would criticize. Just make choices with an artistic eye. You are painting your garden with vegetable seeds that grow “ornaments” that you can later harvest and eat and maybe pull out for a second vegetable to grow later in the season.