Front Yard Vegetable Garden Makeover: Part One

I’ve wanted to put in a front yard vegetable garden for years. I’m finally doing it! Luckily, front yard vegetable gardens are legal in L.A. I can’t have chickens, but at least I can do this.

The plan is to put in 3 or 4 raised beds and fill all around with gravel. I’d also like a small table and a couple chairs out front. I look forward to sitting out front with a cup of coffee or tea, watching my garden grow. And yes, we are going to put a fence in front. That way you get a little privacy, and you don’t have to worry about anyone swiping your veggies.

I want to plant more tomatoes and basil (I have some growing in our side yard already,) as well as more zucchini, lettuce, and blueberries and watermelon.

These are the “before” pictures. I hired my gardener to come and do the heavy lifting (taking the lawn out).

I was going to just do lasagna gardening (read the book  Lasagna Gardening)… but we realized the yard was too high and sloped in the middle.

So we had to take the grass out and also remove some of the dirt.

Here is what it looked like after the gardener dug up the lawn.

And carted it away.

Who needs a front lawn anyway?

It worked out fine because we were able to use the dirt in the backyard, where there were brown spots on the lawn and where the soil was hard and too low.

And PS: I despise the landscaping! We used to have gorgeous calla lillies but when we were trying to sell our house a couple years ago, a different gardener put in those big ugly spiky plants. They were small when he put them in but now they’re monsters. I guess he didn’t factor in how much they would grow.

I plan to replace them with lots and lots of flowers — calla lillies (which grow like weeds here,) lavender, and roses.

This is where we left off this week.

Stay tuned next week for Part 2 when we’ll be adding the raised beds and gravel.