How to grow your own strawberries
Happiness is a strawberry patch! Get our no-fail guide on growing your own, plus the best varieties for your location
Front-yard strawberry patch
Scrapping the front lawn comes naturally to Calvin Abe. “My garden is about exploring ideas,” says the L.A. landscape architect,
who has used the spot to experiment with everything from native plants to Mediterranean ones over the years. His latest endeavor:
a front-yard strawberry patch, which was inspired by his childhood growing up on his grandfather’s farm outside Sacramento.
“I remember the smell of the berries, the scent of the earth they grew in,” he says. “And how—for a treat—my grandfather would
serve me fresh berries over homemade ice cream.”
The front yard may seem an unlikely spot for a strawberry patch, but it made perfect sense to Abe. The space was sunny and
big enough for strawberries, and the plants—pretty, green, and neat—would look great in front of his Westchester neighborhood
house. So he cleared and leveled the slightly sloped yard, mail-ordered bare-root plants, and started planting.
