Permission to Use the Sunlight, Please

The revolution has begun.

There is a front-yard food gardening revolution happening in my little suburban neighborhood this spring.

For the sake of their privacy, I won’t show you pictures of my neighbors’ gardens, just mine.

But it’s warming my heart every time a take a walk.

One neighbor got a greenhouse delivered.

Two neighbors have added raised beds and stunning flower borders.

Some lined the fence outside their vegetable plot with hydrangeas and daffodils.

One put in a line of cattle-panel arches down a fenced back wall.

I chatted with the neighbor who’s house faces mine (and therefore has had a front row seat to what I’ve been building over the last 3 springs) as he was shoveling soil into a raised bed and helping his wife plant shrubs and flowers along their driveway up to the mailbox.

I told him it looked amazing and thought it was funny so many of us were *technically* breaking the HOA rules by growing food gardens visible from the front yard. I was the first to dance on that line (my garden is on the side... but you could see it from the front until the shrubs started growing bigger). He said we might as well put a motion forward to change the rule, since so many of us are breaking it. Ha! Strength in numbers :)

The beautiful part for me is that we’re all working it into our landscaping, and it has only made the neighborhood more beautiful.

This kind of shows you how my kitchen garden is "hidden" in the landscaping from the front view. Even most of my trees and shrubs here are food-producing. A fig tree. Blueberries. A Meyer lemon in a pot.

I like to say I’m a rules person, unless I think a rule is stupid. I’m not as likely to throw the rule off all together than to propose a new one I think is better.

So for anyone reading who happens to be on my neighborhood HOA (I know there are some of you here 😉), I suggest our new rule be as follows:

Vegetables may be grown where your property receives sunlight, so long as you take care to make it beautiful.