An edible landscaping approach looks for ways to incorporate edible species throughout the landscape in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing, functionally effective and that takes advantage of the different growing conditions and microclimates throughout a yard according to the needs and preferences of plant species themselves.
When English horticulturalist Robert Hart set out in the mid-1960s to create a healthy and self-sufficient lifestyle for himself and his handicapped brother, he purchased a few acres of land in Shropshire near the Welsh border and began to farm.
“When farms are factories, they produce commodities and profit for agribusiness and charge external costs to the land and rural communities. When farms are natural habitats for humans, domesticated crops and livestock, and also for wild plants and animals, they produce food and multiple other benefits for society… We need all people to look at farming with new eyes, to see the potential of the farm as natural habitat, and to refuse to accept the inevitability of farms becoming rural factories to serve the global economy. We must teach that ‘the land is one organism.’” —Dana Jackson, The Farm as Natural Habitat: Reconnecting Food Systems with Ecosystems. 2002.