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Planting veggies in your front yard. How tacky.

Lawn grass as North America's largest crop: how tackier.

I definitely prefer the look of a mixed vegetable crop to a vast expanse of green.

And I hope we see more of this sort of thing as time goes by. someday soon, we won't be able to afford the luxury of unused land like that that furthermore requires the use of fossil fuel to care for them.

I think this is a great project.

Really great idea... Now if I only had a yard

If aesthetics are your concern, using your yard in a similar fashion for herb gardening may be the way to go. There are tons of herbs that offer a multitude of colors and textures. With herbs you could get away with being much less formal with your growing. You can grow in bunches and do actual landscape designs rather than planting in rows and still have a decent yield. Often, they are less disease prone than a fruit or veggie. They also offer more flowers, they are often perennials (don't have to replant each year like veggies), your place will be filled with fantastic scents -and- you can still harvest or use the herbs for a potential profit or to make your own products!

On the simpler side, I have heard of people doing things like growing chamomile lawns because they are naturally low-growing (no mowing), aromatic, aesthetically pleasing, low maintenance and useful!

Get creative people. Grass is so stinking boring!

Deirdre has the right idea.

Herbs like Oregano can spread to provide ground cover. Mint will grow into nice bushes. And you can mix clusters of herbs with clusters of flowers. The possibilities are pretty enticing. But you could sneak veggies in there too-- a line of tomatoes along a fence, a row of lettuce as a border. Hot peppers are pretty cute and colourful... and fruit-- a strawberry patch, or hanging strawberry baskets, raspberry bushes. None of these things need be unsightly. Quite the opposite.

Grass = soooo yesterday.

Here are some cool, low maintenance (no mow and some are drought tolerant) lawn alternatives:

http://www.stepables.com/default.asp

As far as the edibles, CodeJill has great ideas! Strawberries, if your soil isn't too dense (they prefer sandy and loose over clay or too loamy) and you have plenty of sun, are a great lawn alternative. They spread easily, cute little white flowers, varieties with great sweet fruit, not too many pests (aside from critters or people snacking on the ripe fruit).
Raspberries, with their thorns, are great for under windows as they double as a theft deterrent. They also have a cool, wild texture - great addition to a natural-looking garden.
Garlic and chives grow easily in cute and spiky mounds with fun purple balls of flowers, peas and squash are viney and bear cool shaped leaves. Grapevines are fun texture and again, really easy if you can keep the birds from eating the ripening fruit. It looks great on an arbor over an entryway... Oregano, thyme, basil, coriander, lavender, sage....Really - the possibilities are endless! Go talk to someone at your local quality garden center (i.e. not Home Depot) and get some recommendations about what grows well in your area and with your exposure, your level of care (if you are a gardener or need really low maintenance stuff) and go crazy!

You don't have to plant veggies in rows. You can plant them mixed together in all kinds of artful, cottage-garden ways. You can even have some of them in pots or in raised beds, for added visual interest. Besides, mixing it up has the added benefit of reducing the spread of disease and pests.

If you absolutely MUST put them in rows, no one ever said they had to be straight rows. Consider this vegetable garden:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1242/895029483_db217fb1d8.jpg?v=0

Nausved - what a cute veggie garden.