Current reading: Front Yard Gardens

The weather in these parts is finally settling into seasonal cold, although there's no snow yet and, thanks to this fall's Indian-summer-doubleheader, the grass is still green. In the couple of months between now and the midwinter seed-startathon, I'll be spending a lot of time (1) reading garden books and catalogs until my optical prescription rivals that of Professor Frink, and (2) hatching schemes for converting more and more lawn area to garden space.

Front Yard Gardens: Growing More than Grass, by Liz Primeau, is what the title advertises--a book about how your front yard can evolve beyond the typical lawnscape into a welcoming garden environment--and more, in that the garden design principles it describes (in text) and illustrates (in stunning photography by Andrew Leyerle) could apply just as helpfully to side- and backyard gardens as well.

Front Yard Gardens features several dozen North American gardens, mostly in Canada (with many in Toronto, Edmonton and Winnipeg), but also including a couple of gardens in Austin, Texas and one in Appleton, Wisconsin. The book is organized by chapters that focus on a particular garden style, ranging from "cottage" to "minimalist" to "natural" (to name but a few), with detailed information about plant combinations and gardening technique. The writing is authoritative but personable, and includes extensive excerpts from the author's conversations with the gardeners of many of the featured gardens.

I read, with amusement and recognition, the author's tales of her husband's attachment to the lawn, which was one of the early obstacles to her own front yard garden:

I was itching to take up the rest of the grass and complete my dream garden [....] Of course I needed my husband's okay for the full monty -- to say nothing of his help. But he was turning out to be a hard sell. He was loath to give up his Saturday morning power outings [with the lawnmower....] He thought our small patch of green in the front looked just fine, and what would the neighbors say? Besides, when would we have the time to look after more garden?

Ah, yes. The husband with a lawn jones. (Working on it!)

Hence I'm filled with envy at Jamaica Kincaid's description, in My Garden (Book):, of how she set out creating the beds for her first garden, in utter freedom:

[...] Rob (Woolmington) came with his modest rototiller and made a largish square with it for my vegetable garden and then followed me around the outside perimeter of the house with the same modest rototiller as I directed him to turn up the soil, making beds in strange shapes, so that the house would eventually seem to be protected by a moat made not of water but the result of an enthusiastic beginning familiarity with horticulture.

Front Yard Gardens is a great read, whether you approach it at the level of just paging through it to admire the photographs, or whether you hone in on a specific garden style in a particular chapter to try to absorb all that goes into how to get there. Although it's a beautiful book, it's not at all the typical coffee-table garden book in which you might feel you're gazing on the unapproachable and unattainable. I'm inspired to think: I can do this! (Once I get Spousal Unit to come around.)

My Garden (Book):. Jamaica Kincaid. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. ISBN 0-374-52776-8 (paperback).

Front Yard Gardens: Growing More than Grass. Liz Primeau. Firefly Books Ltd., 2003. ISBN 1-55297-710-2 (paperback).

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Hi - I found your entry during a search for "front yard gardens." Liz Primeau's book is one of my absolute favorites. I'm slowly converting my own lawn into garden.

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