A conversation with Susan Stansbury, Executive Director of Conexions, and Co-director of Conexions Green Fork project.

Hello Susan, give us an overview of the tour!

I’m really excited about how this event has really been growing – literally! This will be our 3^rd annual tour and like the earlier tours, we are sponsoring it in collaboration with Common Ground Garden Supply and Education Center. Our tour showcases a wide range of edible landscapes that have been created by the homeowners themselves, or created with the help of landscape professionals.

It’s a great way to enjoy other people’s gardens, talk with the garden hosts about the motivations behind their edible gardens and pick up tips on how to integrate food into your own landscape. Our tour this year includes 10 home gardens plus Common Ground’s demonstration garden. The self-guided and self-paced tour includes gardens in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, and Los Altos Hills. If you’re in shape you can bike it, otherwise it’s a nice drive through these cities.

What motives people to install an edible garden?

I’d summarize the commonality as love for the planet, family, and friends. People invariably find that their edible garden becomes part of the community and is a way of sharing abundance. Edible gardens provide beauty and joy as well as great tasting food!

As part of our tour, we include a booklet that describes each garden plus what inspired it. And it’s really special to see the gardens in person.

What are some of the benefits of an edible garden?

The major benefits, which have often driven the motivations are… growing healthy, organic foods for family and friends while also reducing our reliance on fossil fuels used in growing and transporting food. Organic food gardeners also tend to be concerned about careful water usage. Our tour will show how they use this precious resource carefully while growing veggies with water saving practices instead of lawn.

What’s the difference between edible landscaping and vegetable garden?

Edible landscaping is about how to grown food in an aesthetic way… incorporating beautiful and food-producing plants into a landscape. For example, artichoke plants, fruit trees, and berry producing bushes can be a wonderful focal point or integral part of the total landscape from a design perspective. A vegetable garden, which also can be beautiful, is typically designed more for production rather than a balance of aesthetics and food-production.

Show us some examples of what an edible landscape can look like!

Absolutely! Here’s a front yard where the owners incorporated lush food producing landscaping in raised beds. Here’s another showing fragrant herbs incorporated into drought tolerant border plantings.

See you on the tour!

For more information about the Edible Landscaping Tour on August 1, 2009,
and to register please visit www.conexions.org/greenfork/gardentour.