October 6th, 2010

(Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn has been revised and reissued by Metropolis Books. Here, in an interview with the American Society of Landscape Architects blogger, Jared Green, Haeg discusses how a remake of the American neighborhood lawn aesthetic could be both practical and artistic. Haeg is an artist, designer, gardener and writer whose temporarily in Italy on a 2010-2011 Rome Prize Fellowship.)

Q: In the new edition of your book Edible Estates: Attack On The Front Lawn, you argue that ripping out front lawns and replacing them with fruit, vegetable, and herb gardens can “ignite a chain reaction of thoughts that question other antiquated conventions of home, street, neighborhood, city.” Why does this start with the front lawn?

Fritz Haeg

The front lawn is wrapped up in our ideas of the American dream. It’s a very iconic and loaded space. When you remove it and replace it with something else, you are questioning all of the values implicit in the lawn and what it stands for. It is significant to me not just because it’s a private space that’s very public – so visible in our cities and such an obvious opportunity to reconsider – but also because of what it symbolizes. The easiest first step for the urban citizen who wants to make a visible impact on their city is to go out that front door and get their hands in the dirt. It is the leading wedge into more complex and ambitious civic activity.

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August 24th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that it will become increasingly fashionable, practical and accepted to do away with your perfectly coiffed green velvet, water-sucking, chemically dependent lawn…and replace it with…a vegetable garden!

I’m not saying the neighbors will rush into your newly composted, tomato and potato plot with tambourines or anything, just that they might not file a homeowner’s association complaint.

There are just too many trendsetters in this arena for the concept of literally laying down roots to not take hold.

Remember the Eat the View campaign? A modest kitchen gardener in Maine and his like-minded buddies pushed through a petition with some 100,000 signers convincing the Obamas to convert some turf to veggie gardening at the White House. The presidential garden, although still surrounded by fields of grass, has been warmly watched by veggie gardeners and struck just the right note in this year of economic hardship.

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