A few years ago we moved to a new home in the Wilmore neighborhood just outside Uptown Charlotte. We were encouraged by friends in the neighborhood to start a garden, something neither of us had done for years though both of us grew up with various experience with family gardening. That small plot in our front yard the first year (the only realistic space due to sunlight) grew to a few new beds the next year and a dozen fruit trees lining our fence

 

We moved again to a new location in the same neighborhood just two years later - we brought our fruit trees with us along with a desire to expand how much we could provide for ourselves. We integrated edible food as much as possible into our landscaping. Our dedicated gardens were expanded to 8 large raised beds and our seasons expanded to not just summer (a given for gardening in the South) but fall, winter and spring as well.

 

Two years later we moved yet again, this time to a home just across town in the NoDa neighborhood. This home is perfect for us. Urban, just 2 miles outside Charlotte's uptown core, and on a double lot with a fantastic set-up for urban gardening and farming. It's one of the primary reasons we chose this home and were willing to move yet again.

 

At large concrete pad at the back (65' x 30') became the setting for our greenhouse and formal raised bed vegetable gardens. The rest of the landscaping is filled with fruit trees, berry bushes, and other edible options.

 

For us, Urban Gardening and Urban Farming are a given. We love to cook, we love good food, we love providing our bodies with healthy fuel and producing as much of it as we can is the best way to know what we eat, how it was raised and what went into its' production.