Required Reading: ‘The Food Forward Garden,’ A Manual on How to Have Your Beautiful Yard—And Eat It Too

Flipping through The Food Forward Garden, the first thing you notice isn’t the fruits and vegetables—and that’s intentional. Landscape designer Christian Douglas has been creating backyard kitchen gardens in Northern California for more than 12 years; in that time he has learned that clients are much more likely to tend and harvest from the garden, if it’s also a beautiful and inspiring place to spend time. So it is no surprise that each garden in his new book is as pretty as it is productive.

From a small city backyard bordered with raised beds to chef Tyler Florence’s elaborate, terraced kitchen garden, Douglas shows us the wide range of what he calls “food forward” gardens—gardens in which the food is brought forward rather than being hidden away in a back vegetable patch. Douglas believes that vegetables, fruits, herbs, and berries should share the prime real estate in our yards with patios, pools, and even the front walk. “By learning how to integrate food into our outdoor spaces, we can make better use of our time and resources,” says Douglas. These gardens aren’t designed to feed a whole family, he adds: “We are looking for people to engage more and grow something.”

The breathtaking landscapes in this book are also an invitation to readers. Douglas believes that people might be more swayed by images of beautiful, aspirational yards than a workaday, how-to guide. This is not to say that The Food Forward Garden is not packed with practical advice—it is, especially the second half of the book, which covers growing tips and specific plants—but in this book visual inspiration is always hand-in-hand with the science of growing food.

Here are 7 ideas to steal from this new book that blurs the line between backyard farming and high-end landscape design:

All photos excerpted from The Food Forward Garden by Christian Douglas (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2024. Photography by Sasha Gulish.

1. Grow food in view.

The kitchen garden should be close to the kitchen. If it’s far away, it’s much less likely to be used. But perhaps even more important, Douglas says it should be right in sight of where you cook. “When it’s in view from the house, you can see when your strawberries are ready to harvest, you’ll know exactly when your broccoli heads are ready and not three days later when they start to go to flower,” he says. “People tend to eat more from the garden and learn faster when they’re seeing the garden several times a day.”

2. Elevate every detail.

Building in beauty is foundational to Douglas’s designs, but that doesn’t have to mean hiring a professional designer or putting in fancy stone walls. Douglas says even something as planting your herbs in a colored, glazed pot that ties in with your outdoor cushions can have a big impact. “Splash out just a little bit and buy something that you’re going to enjoy,” he says. Likewise, if you’re going to build a raised, wooden planter, Douglas recommends going the extra mile to put a trim cap on the top. “We take our ethos of beauty from the conceptual design all the way through to how we accessorize them with labels, tools, and harvest baskets,” he says.

3. Design with symmetry.

How you plant can also increase a raised bed’s aesthetic appeal. If you have two or four beds, Douglas suggests laying them out in a grid, then planting the same things in the corners of each. “We like to use African basil, or even just a variegated thyme, like a lemon thyme, in the four corners of the bed or opposite one another to give it a bit more formality,” Douglas says. “Then as everything else goes rambling and a bit crazy at the end of the summer, [the corners] maintain its structure.” Douglas also plants strawberries opposite one another on the edges of raised beds to similar effect.

4. Add something sculptural.

Douglas encourages gardeners to include a tuteur or another vertical ornament to give a veggie bed structure. “Something as simple as a metal obelisk in the middle of a bed looks good all year round, and it can be a vertical support for the climbing edibles,” he says. “Then in the winter when everything’s died down, it still stands tall as that artistic element in the landscape.” 

5. Make edible swaps.

One of Douglas’s favorite tricks is to swamp in edible lookalikes for a traditional ornamental plant. Think: fruit trees for Japanese maples, avocado or loquat for magnolia, kiwifruit or passion fruit instead of ornamental vines. “We’re always looking for all of those characteristics we look for in other ornamental species,” he says.

6. Mix edibles in with ornamentals.

Another tactic is to weave edible plants into the existing ornamental landscape. For one client with a formal garden with clipped boxwoods Douglas planted blueberry bushes in between the boxwood balls. “Now our clients can come out for two or three months a year and harvest blueberries in the morning with a yogurt,” says Douglas. “To me, that’s what this is about, just getting people to engage with their food.”

7. Start small, then build up.

Looking at all the inspiring gardens in The Food Forward Garden, it could be very easy to get swept up with enthusiasm about adding edibles to your own yard, but Douglas cautions to go slow. “Overwhelm is real,” he says. “I think people can get very excited and then they get burnt out, and that’s a problem because our goal is for longevity.” Douglas likes to start people off with easier plants like herbs, berries, and small fruit trees that “need a lighter touch” and then build from there each season. 

To read Christian Douglas’ responses to our Quick Takes questionnaire, go here. 

See also:

• Required Reading: ‘Beyond the Meadows: Portrait of a Natural and Biodiverse Garden’ by Krautkopf
• ‘Garden Wonderland’: Leslie Bennett’s New Book Shares the Secrets to Designing a Magical Garden
• Required Reading: A Garden Can Be Anywhere