Sometimes, though, in all our enthusiasm for digging up lawns and planting gardens, we don’t always end up with the prettiest yard on the block (especially in the winter, when there’s not much going on in our vegetable beds). If you couldn’t care less about aesthetics, then this might be just fine, but if you find yourself wondering if there’s a way to keep your yard looking good even as it feeds your family, well chances are there is.

In my area, I’ve noticed more and more landscape designers who haven taken master gardener or permaculture design courses or otherwise become trained in creating eco-friendly–and sometimes even edible–landscapes.

As someone who has priced this stuff, I’ll be the first to admit that hiring a landscape professional to redo your yard isn’t cheap, but it does tend to be one of those things that can pay you back somewhat by improving the value of your home. Even in a tough real estate market (or maybe especially in one) curb appeal makes a difference.

Having the advice of a professional can be especially helpful if you’re working around buried pipes, septic systems, foundations, and the like. These folks will know what you can plant where without worrying about roots making a mess of underground things down the line.

If you are trying to save money, something you might consider is hiring a landscape architect to come out and create a design and then doing the actual work yourself. I’m actually saving my pennies to do this myself since I didn’t inherit the design gene. I have a lot of cool edibles planted around my house, but I’d definitely enjoy having more of a planned outdoor retreat and perhaps something that looks a tad prettier as folks drive by!

Here are a couple of landscape designers who specialize in edible work (if none are in your area, try Googling for landscape design + permaculture or perhaps eco-friendly/green/edible gardens):

• SongCroft Garden Design in Snohomish, WA, specializes in “beautiful edible gardens.”
• Eco Logic Permaculture & Landscape Design is based in Portland, OR, but they have done designs in several states.
• Bountiful Backyards does “edible landscape design and installation” in North Carolina and lists their prices for hourly rates and certain common installations (berry patch, rainwater setup, etc.) on their website.

And for you folks who don’t have the hire-a-landscape-designer dream and want to do it yourself, you might want to check out a couple of these books:

• Landscaping with Fruits and Vegetables
• Landscaping With Fruit: Strawberry ground covers, blueberry hedges, grape arbors, and 39 other luscious fruits to make your yard an edible paradise.