This Tuesday we’ll be meeting with John from Our Land Organics for a landscape consultation. I hope to spend the majority of this consultation exploring ideas for the front lawn. The public face of the ecohouse, a thoughtfully designed front lawn will announce our ecologically conscious household and demonstrate alternatives in landscaping that improve property aesthetics and function.

The general plan is to see how many function we can stack into our front yard. I assume some balance must be struck between diversity/number of functions and the health of the whole system. On the far side of realizable goals, I imagine a community compost and seed depository accompanied by a little library. I’m considering the front yard to be a bridge into the neighborhood.

credit: Our Land Organics

Update: John’s consultation and recommendations helped to give some form to our ideas for the front yard. The foundation of the design plan is a central swale/berm that follows the natural contour of our lot. This swale and berm will manage outflow from two downspouts on the front of the house, reducing the amount of runoff into the street. The contour of the swale will serve as a path from the driveway to seating area and provides a context to the front yard for further landscaping and new opportunities for interaction (people-people and people-landscape). This spring we’ll host a public landscaping party to begin implementing parts of the above plan – stay tuned!