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Dine out on your front garden
In this introduction to his new book, MAT COWARD explains how to transform the space at the front of your house into an 'invisible allotment'
ONLY YOU NEED KNOW: Cinnamon vine (Chinese yam), whose roots are good for roasting [Pic: Tororo/Wikimedia]

THERE are neighbourhoods in the world where people are forbidden by law from growing vegetables in their front gardens. Those who do so can be charged with committing a misdemeanour and even, in theory, jailed.

In some places, you can not only be compelled to put your front garden down to lawn but even to keep it mown to a specified statutory height.

In Britain, we perhaps live in a generally more liberal state, with greater tolerance of eccentricity. Even so, I once a knew a man who was ordered by his landlord to stop growing carrots in the window boxes of his rented flat because vegetables “made the property look scruffy.”

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