Foodscaping

Foodscaping is not a set of rules but a bushel of possibilities.

Brie Arthur, The Foodscaping Revolution
Union Street Urban Orchard, a pop-up experiment in London, Designer: Wayward

Foodscaping celebrates delicious, nutritious, beautiful local food

Foodscaping combines vibrant vegetables, ornamental edibles and colourful flowers (many of which you can eat as well!)

Foodscaping brings an explosion of colour, shapes, textures, flavours & fun to your garden.

Foodscaping reconnects us with the lost flavours of indigenous edibles, heirloom vegetables and tempts us to taste the local delicacies that pop up in our yards (like weeds).

Foodscaping preserves truly local versions of edible favourites by reconnecting us with the stories of the seeds that we grow, save and share. 

Foodscaping grows local resilience, regenerates soils and connects earth’s well-being to our well-being

Foodscaping helps you become more sustainable by incorporating permaculture principles into your landscaping.

Foodscaping provides bounty not just for humans, but for pollinators, birds and the other more-than-human beings with whom we share our city.

A bushel of foodscaping possibilities

The possbilities for foodscaping are as endless as your imagination. Here are a few to spark your creativity:

  • Edge beds with edibles
  • Cultivate containers overflowing with herbs, flowers & vegetables
  • Grow colourful pole beans, tiny melons or cute cucumbers up a garden obelix
  • Create a raised bed on top of your lawn using stumps or rocks
  • Create a sharing garden on the traffic strip in front of your house
  • Plant a fruit tree (or a tiny orchard) in your front yard
  • Dream big with your neighbours and weave your gardens together into a street orchard
  • Create an edible hedge (fedge) with plum, persimmon, serviceberries, mulberries, elderberries, hazelnuts, currants & more
  • Transform your balcony or patio into a lush edible garden
  • Design a border populated with perennial vegetables
  • Give your tree a few edible companions such as serviceberry, sour cherry, hazelnut or aronia berry to keep it company
  • Enliven your foundation planting with flowering & fruiting edible shrubs and trees
  • Weave together a tapestry of herbs, flowers, vegetables and berries into a medieval potager garden
  • Let herbs and vegetables bolt to create drama with seedheads that you can harvest for growing or sharing next year
  • Convert your lawn into a food forest (a plant community containing vegetables, flowers, herbs, berries, vines and fruit & nut trees)

If you’re a first time foodscaper, start small. Plant an edible container, edge your beds with colourful lettuce or cabbage, try lemon grass instead of ornamental grass, create a small raised bed or swap out mulch for edible groundcovers.

What if each of us grew one small foodscape?

Let’s green our city with pop-up foodscaping experiments!

Give yourself permission to play. Grow food. Have fun. Experiment. Eat local. Taste deliciousness. Share generously. Save seeds. Sink carbon. Save pollinators. Heal earth. Recruit your neighbours.

#gardening4good #resiliencegardens #askamastergardenerYGK #seedsgrowfood