Veggies to the front

WE’VE BEEN GARDENING our hearts out for the past decade or so. First, because it was fashionable, and then, because in these challenging times, it gives us a way to connect to the Earth, and to provide us with a bit of food.

With all this horticultural activity, you’d think that there would be no gardening taboos left, that every rule had been broken and every icon shattered. Not so. There remains one unspoken commandment that only the bravest of growers dares to contravene. And that is: thou shalt not grow vegetables in the front garden.

Which is bonkers. When you think about it, the spot in front of the house is actually an area where it makes huge sense to grow food. We pass through it several times a day, so it’s easy to keep an eye on our crops, and to see what needs attention, and what needs eating. It’s a sociable place too, where passers-by call out a “hard at work?”, or stop to lean over the gate for a moment or two.

Barry Lupton, a garden designer and lecturer in garden and landscape design, is one of the audacious few who is blithely ignoring the no-veg-in-front convention. The space outside his Portmarnock house – in contrast to the tidy territories of his neighbours – is a jumble of edibles. Potato plants, speckled with pale, starry flowers, peep over the wall; the fronds of a few carrots ramble through the undergrowth; cabbages pose self-importantly; while onions stretch their long, tubular leaves upwards. A stand of tall sunflowers, their heavy buds fattening and nearly ready to burst open, shields a compost enclosure. Near the house, the beefy foliage of kale, perpetual spinach and rhubarb creates a many-textured green tapestry. This cluster of luxuriant-leaved species is in the same mood as the planting in a chic jungle garden, but it has been achieved at about one-hundredth of the price – and it is edible. Pears, apples (including the miniature Irish-bred Coronet kind) and soft fruits, including strawberries, gooseberries and tayberries, are also here. This last is starting to snake along the road side of the garden wall.

“I’ll be putting up wires so that the fruit grows along the front,” says Lupton. “And if people want to help themselves, that’s fine.” Food from this small patch is readily shared with neighbours: “We’re not going to eat all that spinach, for instance.”

For every bit of produce going outwards from the garden, there are unexpected gifts and goodwill coming inwards: firewood from one neighbour and horticultural expertise from another who works for Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority. One day, much to the delight of three-year-old Hannah, a small bouncy castle arrived.

“I think the true value of this garden has not been in the veg,” reflects Lupton, “it has been in connecting with people.” The sense of community on the road is strong: the day that he and wife Kate moved in there were visits from neighbours, all extending welcomes and offers of assistance. Now, he’s in the garden in the evening whenever possible, with Hannah “helping”, and 14-month-old Julie watching: next year, she’ll be helping too.

The older girl is deeply involved in the garden, picking and distributing strawberries, issuing instructions about seed-sowing, and pointing out and naming the different herbs: mint, fennel, rosemary. Her current favourite is definitely mint, she says, demonstrating how to eat it. Or then again, it might be fennel, she says, pointing to the rosemary.

The soil from which all this edible plenty rises was locked under paving and gravel when the couple moved in (a week to the day before Hannah’s birth). Barry stripped off the gravel and prised up the small pavers, piling up the latter to make a neat perimeter around the new garden. He reuses old materials whenever possible: “I try to be as sustainable as possible. I don’t feel guilty about slowing down if I pass a skip.”

Each autumn he covers the soil with fallen leaves that he sweeps up from around the estate. “I just leave them to rot down by themselves. The whole thing is alive now with worms. It’s not ideal to throw fresh matter on like that, but I don’t do much here in the winter time. I just put the stuff on, and maybe dig it over a little.” Neighbours know that he’s on the lookout for good organic material, and deliver bags of leaves to his gate, or grass clippings for his compost heap. “It’s about different perceptions – what some people perceive as waste, I see as energy. Free compost!”

For more on Barry Lupton’s garden and design projects, see his blog at barrylupton.com