Gardening is very important to our family. However, my sister moved into a neighborhood with a home owners’ association that did not allow traditional gardens. She built one small raised bed garden that had to be made of bricks. However, she was not able to build any others due to the regulations of the home owners’ association. People from the association literally came around every single day and gave out expensive citations for anything against the rules, even if you just left a toy in the front yard accidentally. So, you get the idea, it was a VERY strict home owner’s association.
So, how can gardening work for your family in this type of situation? Or perhaps, you don’t want to have a garden in your front yard, and that is the only place that you get sunlight. You can use landscape gardening. Since, I only have one area that is about 30 feet wide that gets full sunlight, I also use landscape gardening. I can plant in sunny areas between trees that can blend in with my landscape, and still look beautiful.
Landscape gardening is becoming much more popular in recent years. Many plants and herbs are actually very beautiful plants. Rather than only buying flowers for your flower garden, why not buy herbs that produce beautiful flowers? While, I do grow traditional flowers, along the sidewalk leading to my house, I also grow perennial herbs. These can have beautiful flowers, and stay green most of the year. One of my favorite flowers is actually the beautiful purple flowers on my sage plants.
When you are looking to buy ground cover plants, you can plant strawberries. When I want to buy new trees, I make sure that I they are fruit or nut trees. These can have beautiful flowers, and look really attractive, while still providing food. To line my hedges, I use different types of lettuce. There are all types of colorful lettuces. When I harvest the lettuce every few days, I just use scissors to cut the leaves, so that the plant will keep producing, not bolt or become bitter. Also, you can consider planting carrots. Carrot tops are dark green and feathery. In the past these were often planted in flower gardens as accents.
My other favorite way to use landscape gardening is through bushes. Who doesn’t LOVE fresh berries! These are so expensive in the store, yet I never have to buy them. Rather than planting traditional bushes, consider planting blueberry, raspberry, gooseberry, huckleberry and blackberry bushes. Just keep them pruned, and they can produce many berries, while still serving as shrubbery.
So, be creative and see what ways you can add edible plants to your yard that blend in while providing fresh and delicious food for your family.
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