Discover a high-style approach to vegetable gardening from award-winning landscape designer Christian Douglas. What if, instead of relegating our vegetable patch to a remote corner of the backyard, we brought it
forward? What if we integrated edibles into our decorative landscapes, letting vegetables, herbs, fruits, and berries share prime real estate alongside our patios, pools, even our front walkways? Equal parts inspiration and instruction, and filled with an abundance of ideas and information,
The Food Forward Garden is a lushly illustrated guide to how we can make better use of our outdoor spaces without sacrificing style. In this comprehensive manual, award-winning landscape designer Christian Douglas shows us how the intrinsic beauty and seasonal rhythms of edibles bring a new level of purpose, meaning, and stunning visual pleasure to the home garden.
"Growing food doesn't have to mean sacrificing style. In his debut book, award-winning landscape designer Christian Douglas showcases the myriad ways to use edibles to elevate the design of your outdoor spaces. Visit chef Tyler Florence's property, whose hillside is transformed into a three-tiered terraced bed filled with an abundance of produce year-round. A family's suburban plot that is a forager's paradise, with hidden edible treasures woven into each space and along every path. Plus gardens in small city backyards, edible plots carved into forests and meadows, even a rooftop vegetable garden. But this is not merely a lookbook. By using his own lush garden in Marin County as a studio/classroom, Douglas introduces readers to the essential tools and techniques they need to successfully plant, grow, and harvest a bounty of vegetables, fruits, berries, and herbs. We learn how to evaluate the best lighting and soil conditions, choose plants that will thrive in our climate, and discover the designer's favorite edible swaps for common landscape plants (a persimmon instead of a dogwood, a fig instead of a maple, a hedge of rosemary instead of yew). The food-forward options are limitless"--