Succulent & Vegetable Edible Front Yard Terraces! [100 Follower Special]

I'm kicking off a potential series today...I call it the Front Yarden 2017 build! This post will introduce the property and some of my plans for it, but also...

As a huge thank you for 100 followers after only 9 days of being on Steemit, I'm going to give 50% of the author rewards of this post to whoever gives me the best ideas in the comments as far as how to transform this property...so stay tuned down below!

Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

A friend of mine generously gave me his front yard to transform into a combination of an edible, succulent, and wildflower garden, all done on terraces.

The property is quite hilly in the front yard, so we needed to install terraces to prevent the (mostly non-existent) rainfall here in San Diego from washing the soil right off the property.

Here we can see the terraced section in process on the corner of the lot:

Wildflowers make up the non-terraced section of the front yard not only to bring in natural pollinators, but because their roots provide a bit of safety from washing out as well:

Up the hill, we planted some banana trees and "mulched" them with landscape fabric and large rocks:

As I mentioned, to the right, I'm keeping the wildflowers there, but probably cleaning them up a bit and organizing that section of the hill a bit.

At the top you can see a wooden structure - that is a full greywater system for the two units of this property. The laundry machines both use biodegradable and non-toxic soap to wash the clothes, which empties into the greywater tank and is used via a gravity drip system:

Here is a better shot from above of the greywater system, as well as what I like to call the "propagation station." This is where I'll be propagating all of the succulents that I plan to put into the rocky sections of the terraces, as well as starting many of the edible plants for the edible terraces:

Finally, here's a shot overlooking the wildflower section of the yard. This is the area I MOST need help with...if you were me, what would you do here? I do NOT want to remove the wildflowers as they bring biodiversity and pollinators, but I'm also a bit OCD and want it to look "nice" as well.

What would you do?

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The inspiration for this post today comes from these Steemers:

• incredible. Highly recommend you check out her stuff.@farmstead - She has been SO supportive and helpful to me in my first week on Steemit, and her photos are
• @greenacrehome - Not only is he the progenitor of the #homesteadslackers bot, but also a great advocate in the homesteading community here on Steemit.

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Thanks For Reading!

If this is your first time reading my writing, thank you!

My name is Kevin and I run a website called Epic Gardening, where it is my goal to teach 1,000,000 people how to garden. Now that I've found Steemit, I'm going all in on this community and sharing as much as I can here. You'll find me writing about gardening, business, health, and philosophy - I can't seem to stick to one topic :P

Thanks and happy Steeming,

Kevin

All images save for header image are mine, taken today!

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As a huge thank you for such a warm welcome to Steemit and my first 100 followers, 50% of my author rewards for this post will go to the person who gives me the most helpful advice and suggestions as to what to do with this front yard!