confounding the neighbors

Hi guys!
I saw that recent post about camouflaging your forest gardens and I thought it would be interesting to hear how some people hide their permaculture deviations from their neighbors. I keep telling them that I am planning on mowing my yard but I never do!

It really depends, I think, on the environment in which you're trying to camouflage. If you live in suburbia, you probably want pretty edibles that look like landscaping plants, like: decorative kale, pansies, nasturtiums, blueberry bushes, rose bushes (rose hips have lots of vitamin C!), dogwoods, cherry trees with pretty flowers.

If you live in a more "redneck" rural area, you want to match your environment. Let your blackberries grow tall. Companion plant in hugels that are full of edible weeds like dandelion. Use old cars as trellises for berries. Let the lawn go to more wildflowers and let it get tall. Intersperse it with low growing edibles, like strawberries and sorrel. I look around at my property and most people probably wouldn't think my hugel mounds were anything more than heaps of dirt with weeds growing in them. They'd also likely think my blackberries were just growing there from negect, not because I'm cultivating them for food.

If you're in a more upscale rural, you probably want to do something more like the decorative food plants growing neatly in wood mulch. Use fruit trees as landscaping elements, surrounding them with nicely mulched edible perennials and annuals. Make a large beautiful water feature, full of arrowhead plants, taro, watercress, cattails, etc, and stock it with an edible fish like carp or sunfish or tilapia.

Those are the ideas that come to mind for me right now. I haven't read Rick Austin's "Secret Garden of Survival," but I'm sure he has a lot more better ideas!

Oh! Another architectural idea for camouflaging in the more upperclass areas would be a nicely done herb spiral. It's the only thing on my property that actually looks nice. People see it and just think that it's a pretty, fancy flower bed. (Here's my herb spiral https://permies.com/t/44289/projects/Herbal-Hugel-Spiral-Randomness). And, mine isn't even as nice as some peoples!



Here's another, fancier spiral:



Another idea would be to make/use pretty metal or wood elements, and then grow beans up them. You could do the same with bird feeders (though you might get quite a lot of bird poo on your beans...). By sculptures, I mean something like this:


or:

or:

Those are some good ideas!I have also been emailing with Dmitry Orlov about having a sailboat. I would really like to have aquaponics in the boat but he said the more likely situation would be to plant small gardens on unused plots and island hop. This topic of camouflage is giving me some interesting ideas on how to have a hidden gardens on islands through out the world!

Why do you ant to hide from the neighbours?
It look as if in the States, growing food is less legal than growing flowers!!!

Here my only concern is that people do not come for harvesting....
So the best is to grow uncommon things that they do not think is food!

move to the mountains =)
have no neighbors, or just a few.

at least this was my solution, just move out to the middle of nowhere. =)

most of my neighbors also grow food trees/plants

it takes getting used to, but theres a lot of freedom in it. nobody cares in the rural areas if you mow your lawn, or anything outside of extreme weirdness/trashiness.....

i also really like fedges / food hedges / living fences for privacy.

Xisco, your point about the "illegality" of growing veggies is very well taken. I do my standard veggie gardening in the front yard, shamelessly, and get some surprising hostility from passers-by, as well as some appreciation. Fortunately my immediate neighbors are very sympathetic, and I take care to keep them supplied with vegetables and eggs. But my city actually has an ordinance containing a list of plants that may be grown in your front yard, and all plants not on the list are illegal. No kidding. None of my vegetables are on the list, needless to say. No trouble so far, but I have thought about how to start a media campaign if the city comes around demanding that my vegetables be removed.

That is crazy!
I had begun to understand this, which is not a point in Europe.
How can it be illigal to grow veggies?
What are their arguments about this?

I would understand about "smoke plants".... but veggies!
Heather, how do they express hostility about this? What sort of things do you listen to?

Leila, I do live in the mountain and only with grower-neighbours...
...and this is not so idealistic.
People who are "in the wild" can be very upseting because they have this "romantic" idea about wild nature. Everybody says "I am here to be quiet", but all have a different idea of quietmess!
Most people have money and do not rely really on their garden for a living.
This is just a plus, a luxury, more or less accroding to the persons.

Xisca, I live in a high-desert part of the Southwest and water use is a very political issue here, and some passers-by have been mildly to very hostile toward me over the issue of water use and how much they imagine that my garden must use. In fact I use less than the residential average; should probably post a laminated water bill on the front fence! And nearly everything that I water is edible.
A couple of people have commented very unfavorably on having vegetables in the front yard at all, but there are some crazies everywhere.
I also have people want to tour the garden, and they are fascinated by the uses of the plants that I grow, and that's always nice.
But the United States, despite its pioneer origin, has some very conformist thinking, and many people would rather see a xeriscaped front yard that produces absolutely nothing useful than have to look at my flourishing vegetable garden. Go figure.

I spent a good 1/2 hour trying to find this thread today, but 6 years have gone by, and all the keywords I thought I'd used, I didn't actually use!

I was thinking about how in an HOA (Homeowners Association), you could probably get by with some deceptively delicious plants.

Vines (growing up an arbor/bower/pergola or pretty trellis):

- Artic Kiwis or hardy kiwis with red leaves
- Grape varieties, especially ones with dramatic leaves, like these very purple grapes
- Scarlet runner beans
- Purple Magnolia Snap Peas

Edible Flowersplanted in "flower beds":

- nasturtiums
- pansies
- roses (also have edible rose hip fruits!)
- borage
- fushias
- chives
- calendula
- daylily
- hostas (edible shoots, too!)
- dahlia (edible tuber)
- more varieties in this thread and this thread

Herbaceous plants:

- Decorative kale
- Hostas
- Decorative cabbages
- strawberries
- creeping raspberries (often used in parking lots)
- ground covers like thyme, mint, oregano, lemonbalm
- lettuces in various colors, planted like decorative kale/cabbage

Bushes:

- Blueberries
- Clove currants (lovely fall foliage)
- Red flowering currants
- Blackcap raspberries (lovely blue canes--need good pruning to keep pretty)
- Rosemary
- Roses
- Hazelnuts/filberts (stay small and make nuts and some have nice fall foliage)
- Nanking Cherry bush
- Sage

Trees:
- Cherries
- Plums
- Flowering quince

There are certain types of Lilies that are edible - I use the flower pods in stir-fries - and they look lovely in the garden. Unfortunately, the deer agree that they're edible and got the lot this year... sigh... I recall that the shoots are also edible, but I haven't tried them yet.

I think Red Russian kale and parsley mix in fairly well for edibles in the front yard. Probably most kale wouldn't get objections from the front yard "police".

This thread reminded me of The Garden of Earthly HOA Violations, so named because it was designed to function as a privacy fence and food garden in an HOA which forbade both. I can't find the post outlining the setup of it, but if I remember correctly all of the materials used in its construction (mostly containers and bricks) were recycled.

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/search/the+garden+of+earthly+hoa+voilations

I think the original blog post was tagged with a creative spelling of the word violations, so that might be why you didn't find it.  This is everything tagged for that HOA hidden garden.

I have very.... "manicured lawn" type neighbors, but thankfully not as restrictive city bylaws as some places. We have only had one bylaw complaint in the 13 years we have lived here. We were asked to mow our lawn as sections were over 18" and warned that we'd have to get rid of the rabbits we weren't technically allowed to have if anyone complained about them. Thankfully, as manicured as the neighbors lawns are, they still like to veggie garden in their neat, tidy little gardens. So we kept them happy by offering them rabbit manure! We also share fruit we pick from our trees and vines, and make sure that they know that if its growing, and they can reach it over the fence, its fair game. I'd rather keep happy neighbors (and thus bylaw off my back) through sharing, than camouflaging. Seems to be working so far!

The only problem we've had is having our trailer full of compost threatened with towing because we left it unloaded for a little too long on the street in front of our house.

I grow veggies in the front yard and the parking strip. I have a rose/perennial/herb border on the outside of the fence on one side of the sidewalk and try to keep the parking strip tidy. I've had lots of complements and no complaints. I think the flowers distract some people from the veggies.

However I don't ( and would never) live in an HOA or anywhere with strict landscaping rules.

I know that people were doing some raised beds out on the nature strip but the local council wasnt happy and told the resedents they had to go but mind you it was in a very quite street with very little foot and car traffic

Andrew Tailby wrote:I know that people were doing some raised beds out on the nature strip but the local council wasnt happy and told the resedents they had to go but mind you it was in a very quite street with very little foot and car traffic

What's the definition of a "nature strip"? Actually native plants, or just grass? This totally sounds like a spot for native edible plants! Particularly interspersed with wild-life supporting flowers for nectar or seed producing plants for birds. A picture might be helpful, as would some idea of your location/ecosystem.

I live in a suburban bordering on rural neighborhood in Athens, Georgia, with houses built in the eighties that have seen better days. There used to be an HOA here, but now there are so many renters (like us!) and a few abandoned houses that nobody cares unless somebody is extremely trashy or noisy. When we moved in, the 3/4 acre lot was overgrown with knee-high poison ivy and English ivy growing up into the pines and sweetgums and killing them. I've worked for five years now to get all that cleared out and about 96 sick trees taken down on the cheap. I don't own this house, after all...although one day maybe my son can buy it.

There was a sizeable amount of lawn, too, that I've cut down considerably in size. But the part of the lawn I've kept, I keep mowed and try to plug in perennial flowering plants for pollinators that will look "planned." I think "planned" is the key word for those neighbors who bristle at the thought of somebody not taking care of their property.

The back yard has large brush piles and lots of pine logs lying around, some of them cut up and upended to make little log-lined beds and some of them just lying there until I can either cut them up myself or get somebody out to cut them up. I've also "landscaped" some beds through the mowable part of the lawn that I've set up to look like raised beds, but I break down all my cardboard and stack it there where the neighbors can't see it but use it to sheet mulch areas as I get them under control. I've pretty much got my arbor and chicken run infrastructure built, and I've got most of the guild-anchoring fruit trees in, so now I'm just focusing on plenty of pollinator plants and soil building. When people ask me about what I'm doing "back there," I say I'm working on a forest garden to replace the diseased pines that I've had taken down at my own expense, even though I'm a renter. I tell them "I'm just working on making it better than it was, but I'm seventy on low fixed income, so I can only move so fast."

Glad to live in a country where I can grow all plants in my front and back yard I like!

I have something different with 'neighbours'. At the allotments (rented plots to use as vegetable gardens) most of the neighbours don't know Permaculture. Or if they ever heard the word, they think it's about 'let nature do its thing', or using cardboard to cover the soil. Most of them have the traditional vegetable gardens, with 'monoculture' beds and rows of flowers. But okay, many of them work more or less organic.

Now I rented this allotment plot*, my goal is to show how nice a permaculture garden, full of edibles, can look. I don't use cardboard. I do my best to have neat beds where vegetables, fruits and herbs grow. I hope they see that 'working together with nature, not against it' isn't the same as 'let nature go wild'...

*the person who rented this plot before me did not do much there, because of health issues. And the one before him tried to apply some permaculture, he planted fruit trees and shrubs.

Here's how my allotment garden looked last month:

This is a picture of my perennial strip next to the sidewalk. It's got tea roses and is arranged by color (white, red, etc to purple and black) so most people think it's just an ornamental flower garden, but 90% of the plants have a use. On the far corner is a bay tree hedged into a simple shape. Ornamental grasses come in interesting colors and can be used in basketry. Bronze Fennel has lovely black foliage.

On the other side of the fence is my front yard veggie garden (you can see some Fava beans), and on the other side of the sidewalk is also veggie beds, currently filled with self sowers like calendula, California Poppy, Cilantro, and breadseed poppy. Just yesterday a neighbor said how much they liked the flowers in my (veggie) beds (the calendula are in full bloom). They have another month to enjoy them, then I'm making room for peppers and sweet potatoes!