{"id":689,"date":"2010-03-09T22:00:06","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T22:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/?p=689"},"modified":"2018-11-15T15:09:17","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T20:09:17","slug":"edible-estates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/2010\/03\/edible-estates\/","title":{"rendered":"Edible Estates"},"content":{"rendered":"
We have a Greek cousin who tried to explain our front lawn to his friends.<\/div>\n

\u201cDo they park their cars there,\u201d they asked? \u00a0\u201cDo they grow food, do they sit there?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it\u2019s just grass,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t do anything with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when our Greek uncle built a little villitsa<\/em> by the seashore, in true lord of the manor style, he fronted it with a lawn. But he couldn\u2019t let the rectangular grass strip alone and planted shrubs right down the middle, a somewhat confused aesthetic.<\/p>\n

In Edible Estates: An Attack on the Front Lawn<\/a><\/em> , Fritz Haeg unpacks the front lawn\u2014why are we mowing instead of growing?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The garden on the cover is in Baltimore<\/p><\/div>\n

In various essays, landscapers, designers, and gardeners point out that lawns are holdovers from our manorial aspirations, but they make no sense. Lawns take up our time, they require water, pesticides, and cheap gas to maintain, and they could\/should be turned over to gardens.<\/p>\n

His proposal makes perfect sense, yet we can\u2019t seem to help ourselves.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

For this you bought a lawnmower?<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Between your sterile gray cubicle and your colleague’s sterile gray cubicle, you can walk past this sterile green surface.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0Haeg, in an act of art and environmentalism, encourages turning the otiose front lawn into a rich and productive garden, one that can feed you and your neighborhood.\u00a0 He looks for lawns on streets with regular traffic, in front of \u201ciconic\u201d American houses, lived in by enthusiastic and committed gardeners. And while there is lots of talk about upset neighbors, most of the project\u2019s gardeners have now met their neighbors, who are curious about the gardens.<\/div>\n
If this intrigues you, we are in planting zone 7, which means spinach in February, cantaloupe in May, and fennel in September.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have a Greek cousin who tried to explain our front lawn to his friends. <\/p>\n

\u201cDo they park their cars there,\u201d they asked? \u00a0\u201cDo they grow food, do they sit there?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it\u2019s just grass,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t do anything with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when our Greek uncle built a little villitsa<\/em> by the seashore, in true lord of the manor style, he fronted it with a lawn. But he couldn\u2019t let the rectangular grass strip alone and planted shrubs right down the middle, a somewhat confused aesthetic.<\/p>\n

In Edible Estates: An Attack on the Front Lawn<\/em> , Fritz Haeg unpacks the front lawn\u2014why are we mowing instead of growing?<\/p>\n

In various essays, landscapers, designers, and gardeners point out … Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[68,67,69,70],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-planning","tag-community-created-agriculture","tag-front-lawns","tag-suburbs","tag-vegetable-gardens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5592,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions\/5592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}