My take on foodscaping

Foodscaping is the way we bring not only beauty to our surroundings, but also affordability, flavor and nutrition back to our food.

JOHN C. TRIMBLE. TEDXOGDEN 2020

What do we mean by foodscaping? Foodscaping is replacing traditional landscapes with landscape designs that are not only beautiful, but also grow a lot of food in a small area.

To me ‘foodscaping’ puts the emphasis on food, as well as the actual action of transforming traditional landscapes and putting food-bearing plants front and center.

The basic idea is that we love eating fresh fruit and vegetables…when they have incredible taste; and, we love having outdoor space that is gorgeous and artistic, while functional and inspiring. We’d rather have a foodscape than an typical landscape. Some of the most stunning, ornamental plants also produce fruit and vegetables that are more flavorful and nutritious than anything sold in grocery stores in the last 30 years.

Somewhere along the line in the evolution of modern US culture, we developed the idea that a yard should be only ornamental, but that food cultivation should either be done by someone else or that it should be relegated to a corner plot of basic rows. In the US, a yard is distinct from a garden, and food cultivation happens in a massive farm between 700 and 2500 miles away. The fruits and vegetables we eat taste like they have been picked too early,… because they have been picked way too early. Meanwhile, the average American spends a considerable portion of our time manicuring our grass lawns and landscape, or we pay someone to do it, without enjoying the fruits of that labor, so to speak. In Spanish, the word jardín is often used by some to mean not only garden but yard. Why can’t our yard be our garden? Let’s invest our time and resources in landscapes that give us more than a basic yard. Let’s turn our yards into foodscapes.