I'm in the process of gradually doing the same thing in my Northern VA front yard. Your ideas sound like an excellent start. There is a very good Edible Landscaping nursery in Afton, VA near Charlottesville - not too close to you, but likely a reasonably day trip. They are at http://www.ediblelandscapin.com - they do mail order, but if you go yourself you can hand select your plants, save on shipping, and draw on the extensive knowledge of the owner (at least during the week). For fruit trees it depends on what you like to eat the most. Most varieties are available on dwarf root stock, which you should be able to space 8-10' apart. I planted Lingonberry and Wintergreen between my blueberry bushes - they grow slowly, but make pretty groundcover year round, happy in some shade as an understory plant, and are edible, too! I'm also interested in trying some wild ginger, which is native, though I don't have it yet. You can get bush cherries, and bush varieties of filberts (non-native), both grow into fairly large shrubs. Artichokes die back in the winter, but are very attractive in the warmer months, and are perennials you can grow from seed. There are also hardy kiwis which grow on thick, sturdy vines (similar to wisteria, but they don't grab on as aggressively). They take a fair bit of space, heavy pruning, and at least 1 male plant to pollinate up to 5-6 females. I prefer their small, smooth-skinned fruits over the hairy ones in the grocery stores. They fruit prolifically, and yield kiwis the size of large grapes - you can just pop them in your mouth without peeling! So far in my yard I have Sunshine Blue blueberries (tolerate less acidic soil than most blueberries), Hosui Asian pear, a non-astringent Asian persimmon (Shenko?), a contorted filbert, and a bush filbert (don't recall the variety) in my front yard. I will add another small tree (Asian pear or sour cherry, I think), and a pair of hardy kiwi. I'll also start new Artichokes - I let the ones I planted in 2007 get overgrown with grass, and they didn't survive last winter. Sorry for the lengthy post - I hope it helps a bit! Enjoy your project. -Leah

The quince we had was a major spreader so I wouldn't recommend that unless there are different degrees of spread. I only have experience with the one. It is shrubby too. Also Every year I somehow managed to gash myself on it's thorns as well. It is very pretty though, even the foliage. A fig comes to mind or how about a 4 in 1 tree. I think it's 2 apples, a plum and peach. I'm sure there are varied ones though. That probably isn't a streamlined look though and it's not anything exotic. You could also do something like pine. You're in a warm enough zone to have a variety that you could harvest pine nuts. Elderberries are super healthy and delicious and they can be shaped into a small tree or left shrubby. Mulberries are pretty darn good too. I'm a big fan of those. We had a Stanley Plum at our last place and that was self fertile. It was a great tree for the front yard.

Many edible plants are beautiful and a lot of them have been mentioned. However, amost types can go downhill and look crappy at a certain point. You likely could get away with more edible crops in the front yard if you are careful to remove any foliage that starts looking crappy, and then also by removing any plants that start looking awful from disease or once they are past their prime. I think that a person can get away with edible crops in a front yard much more easy if they keep them exceptionally well-groomed and well-maintained. Check out Rosalind Creasey's book "Edible Landscaping". There's a really old version from decades ago and then an updated edition from around 2010. Her edible landscapes are so beautiful that many times people do not realize how many edibles are mixed in with the ornamental plants. In the 2010 edition of the book, there's photos of different edible landscapes she designed from across the country, which is great for getting ideas. Her book series about rainbow gardening, i.e. The Rainbow Pepper Garden, and others in the series first got me started a long time ago on growing garden veggies in a wide array of color. I like peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, bush green beans, Swiss Chard, lettuce (especially when you mix in red varieties for contrast with green varieties), strawberries, blackberries, fruit trees, grapes and all kinds of herbs in front yards. Blueberries will work if you have acidic soil or create a bed with highly acidic soil for them, or you can grow them in large containers where you have total control over the soil-less mix in which they are growing. Squash plants can get big and gangly and flop around so might be best in a back yard or in a side yard with prettier plants in front of them. Icebox watermelons have smaller leaves than regular melons and are gorgeous as long as the plants stay lush and healthy. They produce smaller melons and lots of them. I grow 6 or 7 varieties of icebox melons every year. Bush cucumbers also would work well as long as you keep the foliage looking good (which can be a challenge in wet years when disease predominates). Because the cole crops (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, etc.) have such issues with cabbage loopers and imported cabbage worms, they likely would work better hidden away in a back yard. Eggplant plants are gorgeous if you don't have a flea beetle issue with them, and you can grow eggplant varieties that fruit in many colors: dark purple, violet, white, orange, green, and even purple-and-white streaked. Remember edible flowers too like violets and nasturtiums. Vining crops like sweet potatoes can be used as a edible ground cover. I just bet the HOA lets people grow ornamental sweet potatoes in their front yards, so how could they object to you growing edible sweet potatoes in your front yard? The only difference in the edible sweet potatoes and the ornamental sweet potatoes is that the edible ones were selected and perhaps refined by breeding for the quality of their tubers, and the ornamental one were selected and refined because of the quality of their foliage. To me, a bed full of edible sweet potatoes is just as beautiful as a bed of ornamental sweet potatoes. The sky is the limit if you're not in an HOA neighborhood, but with an HOA, you should expect to encounter some degree of resistance. It just depends on how militant the HOA Board happens to be. I think that if you mix herbs, flowers and veggies together in a pleasing arrangement, a lot of folks won't even realize you're growing edibles out front. I like to mix begonias with pepper plants, with the taller pepper plants in back and the begonias in front. The lighter foliage of the begonias and their pink, red or white flowers look gorgeous with the dark green pepper plants behind them, for example. That's just one example of how you can mix edibles into ornamental plantings and have something that is very visually pleasing. You also can grow edibles in very large containers mixed together with flowers and herbs. This would give you some flexibility because you could move the containers around to the back yard or side yard if the HOA starts giving you trouble about having the edibles in the front. There's a great book by Pamela Crawford called "Easy Container Combos: Vegetables and Flowers" with lots of photos of amazing containers where she has mixed in edibles with flowers. One of my favorite combinations of edibles in containers is to use dwarf cherry tomato plants and to mix in with them some lettuce plants, marigolds and something more upright like blue salvia. Add a small ornamental sweet potato plant or two, and the sweet potato vines will fill in the space after all the lettuce is harvested and removed. Swiss Chard in various colors is strikingly beautiful and will work with other brightly colored veggies and flowers. You harvest the outer leaves as they grow, so there's always newer fresher leaves coming along that look picture perfect. I probably wouldn't try sweet corn in the front yard. It probably looks too much like a crop for you to get away with growing it out front, but other than it, I cannot think of much else that would be objectionable to a reasonable HOA board. The problem is that some HOA boards are not reasonable at all. Good luck. Dawn

If pollinated, then "yes" the Peperomia will produce seeds. What you are seeing is not "a" flower but rather what botanically may be referred to as a "rachis" -- a stem bearing numerous minute flowers. Each of those little bumps give rise to flowers. Individual flowers are so tiny, you basically need a really strong magnifying glass or a microscope to get a good look at them. Depending upon the species or hybrid, the flowers may be green, white, or red. Here's and example of my Peperomia prostrata in bloom. Those little red dots are the flowers -- and I took this photo through a magnifying glass. They're that tiny. Sunlight varies considerably by latitude, region, and season. For example, in the summer, the light from my balcony is strong and hot. I have had some orchids burn sitting by the glass doors. During the winter here, we can go days or sometimes even weeks without a glimpse of sun -- just gray overcast. During that time, the light is so weak that high light plants or even medium light ones may etiolate. In addition, keep in mind that the glass itself cuts down on the amount of light entering your home. And then there is the simple fact that plants need time to adjust to sudden changes in conditions -- especially light intensity. Think what would happen to a Caucasian living in the Great White North who, after being indoors for months, decides in early March to go vacation in Arizona. What will happen to them when they go on that 15km afternoon hike in the desert with no sunscreen?