A few months ago, I was freaking over Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates, a project that transforms the front lawn from a grassy wasteland into a sustainable landscape of native plants and garden veggies.

Today, the New York Times profiles Haeg’s newest Edible Estate in Los Angeles. Meet the Foti family, their new Fritz-ified front lawn and their furious neighbors.

As explained by the article, the American front lawn has quite a history. It wasn’t always the lush green grass carpet we mow and mow and mow today. You can read more about our obsession with green, green grass in this great essay “Why Mow?” written by Michael Pollan author of Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilema (thanks to Matt from Snarkmarket for the link).

“Perhaps because it is this common land, rather than race or tribe, that makes us all Americans, we have developed a deep-seated distrust of individualistic approaches to the landscape. This land is too important to our identity as Americans to simply allow everybody to have their own way. After having decided that the land should serve as a vehicle of consensus, rather than as an arena for self-expression, the American lawn–collective, nationalized, ritualized, and plain–presented the ideal solution.”

Anyone remember that episode of the X-Files where Moulder and Scully, posing as the perfect yuppie couple, move into a planned community with a garbage monster who kills residents with unkept lawns (season 6, episode 15)?

The nasty beast would have a field day with all the brown lawns in our St. Louis Park neighborhood, especially now, as I experiement with a little edible landscaping of my own.

Bye-bye bushes. Hello heirloom tomatoes.

Have you heard about Fritz Haeg and his Edible Estates project?

I came across an old post on inhabitat.com that explained how Edible Estates got started and why you should eat your own lawn.

Now, I really want to un-garden!

PS: I read there’s an Edible Estate in the Minneapolis area — Anyone know where?