John Robb wants us to stop landscaping our lawns, and start foodscaping them — growing food for our families. And he thinks the way to jumpstart it is for farmers to make house-calls. I love this idea, but don’t think I could participate in it: when we applied to Hackney Council in London for permission to add a greenhouse frame to our balcony they rejected it because it would “interrupt the vertical rhythm” of our building. As far as I can tell, “vertical rhythm” is an imaginary aesthetic quality that is more important than real food.
Of course, since most people in the developed world don’t know how to grow food anymore and many of the methods and tools used to grow high quality food are still being developed, we are going to need to some help.
One great way to do that is to join a local foodscaping program.
This type of program is like a food subscription at a CSA. However, in this program, the farmer comes to you. He/she converts your yard into a high performance garden and teaches you how to garden it successfully.
I think that if we are smart, we’ll be spending more money on foodscaping in ten years than landscaping. If so, good food will be available everywhere.
What if Farmers made House Calls?