This discussion amuses me. I posted here YEARS ago about wanting a very private and functional front yard--one that was completely screened from the street and yet provided entertainment spaces. I was instantly reamed by no few people for wanting something weird and unfriendly--front yards should be ornamental, not an entertainment space, period, and it was WRONG to want to shut out the street view. Never mind that no one here has seen my neighborhood--never mind that there are a good dozen houses with the level of privacy I seek and about as many different total styles of house and garden as one can imagine in my very eclectic neighborhood with very large lots. We have everything from Mediterranean houses with formal clipped gardens and sun-drenched yards to cabins in dense woods to Tudor-style houses with English cottage gardens to American cottage gardens to five-over-four-and-a-door cookie cutter colonials to 1970s geometric houses with loose, abstract juniper landscaping to lovely contemporary-traditional houses with highly landscaped woodland gardens to....well, EVERYTHING. We have people with no fences, people with 6' wooden privacy fences, people with picket fences, people with split-rail fences--in back AND front. People with no-knock policies and people with NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT signs. People with naked front yards and people whose houses can't be seen at all from the street. 4500 square foot houses and five-car garages and 1000 square foot houses with no garages. And yet when I said I wanted to screen my house as completely as possible from the street, people--including some designers--instantly told me what a horrible, unfriendly person I must be, and what a blight to the neighborhood ANY house so screened would be, and how weird it would be to have entertaining spaces in a (technical) front yard. (I'll let some of my neighbors know who have already done this. They'd be interested to hear it.) No one, interestingly, asked me WHY I wanted this. The answer is quite logical. We have an enormous front yard, because of the shape of our lot, which serves no practical purpose. Being at the end of a cul-de-sac, we get no end of idiots who wander into the neighborhood and turn around in front of our house, staring into it and shining their headlights into the rooms. The back yard is mainly given over to a potager garden and children's play areas, as we have the neighborhood "fun yard," too, so the front is a better place for grownups. And I adore the feeling of intimacy in a garden and the sense of movement created by going from room to room--and garden rooms require garden walls, with borrowed views and intertwining paths. (These paths are fabulous for children, too--chase and hide-and-go-seek are a hundred times more fun with paths and rooms!) Conversely, there is nothing more unpleasant to me than a flat, treeless, unscreened garden with beds bursting with 3' high perennials. Did those who didn't like the idea ask? No, they said that obviously I hate my neighbors and should live in a place without any. (That's why I invited 300 to come over weekend after next, right?) My main point here is that a garden can take many forms and still be a good garden--even unconventional ones in most neighborhoods. It's all about purpose and context. And those must always be considered. Whether a garden is good or bad has nothing to do with whether it is public or private, sun-drenched or shady, practical (vegetable) or compulsive (a collector's garden) or cheap or common or....well, many things. Stella d'Oro daylilies can still be part of a very good design. It's all about fulfilling a purpose--almost any purpose--aesthetically. And that can be done many, many different ways. Amusingly enough, I'd read--and, minus the hippie nonsense, largely agreed with--A Pattern Language not long before setting out on my garden design, and it, along with the patterns of traditional Chinese gardens, really inspired me in my quest! (No, my garden is NOT Asian, but it serves the same sorts of impulses.) Now, I don't remember who all condemned my "bizarreness" at that point, but a couple of the old regulars did from the outset on the basis that that kind of design could have no place in any neighborhood, period. That close-mindedness doesn't seem like good design to me. It seems like not thinking about good design. There were plenty problems with my initial design--its scope was to great to do at once, and it was TOO structural, especially since I've since turned away from modernist gardens, even though my house is modernist--that, too, was a big tripping point for those who could not reconcile themselves to a geometric landscape, period! THAT decision has more to do with economics than aesthetics, though--plenty of geometric modernist gardens appeal to me, but the level of hardscaping required is cost-prohibitive at this point and quite opposite the incremental approach I've adopted. It also had unnecessary elements, or rather elements that had goals that could be accomplished more inexpensively and more reasonably in other ways. But the central objections--geometry is bad/natural shapes good, using front yard for entertaining and having furniture bad/back yard good, screening front yard bad/public front yard good--didn't address truly design issues but addressed issues of prejudice or taste. (Those that addressed the DESIGN, I listened to and took into consideration.) One of the most ridiculous arguments I got into at this site was about trees--again, years ago. A couple of people flatly declared that no tree over 35' in height had a place in a residential settings. NONE. No freaking kidding. I can't IMAGINE Mobile, Alabama, without its live oaks, among many other cities with their fabulous LARGE trees. There would be no tree-shaded boulevards in such a world! I happen to loathe neighborhoods with only "people-scale" trees, all younger than the houses. But not even I don't say they CAN'T have good design. Design issues are about balance, grace, and function--with any number of constrictions or lack thereof. They aren't about absolute, blanket rules. Knot gardens and woodland gardens, sculptural gardens and prairie gardens can ALL have good design, even though each has a different and conflicting aesthetic. Internal rules are often the most important.

I bought some of that hardscape myself this year. Stones that made an instant path. and I was looking at them wondering how many millions of dollars it would take to get rid of a bunch of my grass. The dandelions came up in the cracks right away so I thought the savings in labor was nil. Funny thing how attempting to stop Mother Earth from clothing its nakedness never works. There's a kind of wild ground cover around here which always stays green and never needs water. It makes a little dark blue flower, and always stays short. I would have no problem with a whole yard of it. Nobody looks into it, though. I was thinking about what one of my son's friends said about Walmart. "You know I get into that place, and I feel like it's suckin' my soul." The thing is Walmart is a publicly traded company, and reflects an attempt to market to Everyman. It has institutionalized itself by driving out competition. In places like this, it lets people down frequently by being out of the thing you need, and nobody else has got it either, because they can't sell it as cheaply. They are out of mittens by March 15th, for instance. Most of the country do not need mittens on March 15th. Children always grow out of their boots precisely on March 15th. Now, if you think about it, much of the soul sucking is due to a national sneer campaign. Do you suppose that working class folk object to being called "Joe Sixpack?" Many Montanans are beer connoisseurs. They know everything about beer worldwide. It assumes a lack of education and taste, as though those who work, just plain work, are unable to read a book, do not master difficult skills, and can't spell quiche. And we don't know the difference between good things and junk. We know we are buying junk, but have few other choices. Along comes Vintage Gardens and Ashdown Roses, which might have been invited to landscape the Walmart parking lots as a learning tool. But they weren't. No, we have that tall grass shoved in a long row with a gravel cover, looking so ridiculous, scrunched up by the rocks, unable to grow and become an undulating wave like it's meant to. While we are at it, do you have a problem with those individuals who write opinion pieces for, say, the New York Times, whose latest fad is to sneer at populism? In one dictionary it says that a populist is a member of the People's party, while in another it says that a populist is for, of, and an advocate of the people. Hmmmm.....What's wrong with that? Well, I've done my bit. I wrote Walmart a letter and told them about antique roses, and gave them this address. Guess it's time for this populist to have a Lite beer.

I'm late to the game, but wanted to share an idea we're doing this year. We're starting some local, neighborhood-run produce markets. They're technically grey-market - someone will turn a garage or shed into a produce stand. Anyone can drop produce by, and they list inventory on a whiteboard. Payments are handled through Venmo, so shoppers pay growers directly through a mobile app. It's a grassroots thing meant for neighborhoods, but I think if you had a handful of these going in town, a professional growers could drop off a steady supply of produce to each one. The folks who host it get to keep any produce unsold after a couple of days, so there are definite benefits for them. We wrote down the business model, if anyone wants to steal it :) http://www.hackyourhometown.com/the-grassroots-produce-stand-that-runs-itself/

I haven't tasted the "Toffeetastic" cookies but TBH just about every gluten free commercially produced cookie I've tasted is indeed a "gluten free wasteland". A home economics class I used to assist did make some really good gluten free chocolate chip cookies but they're the only ones I've ever tasted that I would eat on purpose. Glad to see Mike Rowe's watchers responded to the tune of over 7,000 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. I'd love to see that lot being delivered :-)