OP, once you get settled, I'd love to hear an update of the garden.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can live anywhere. Choose a house with a larger back yard and smaller front. Just do your edible garden in the back yard.

Do you feel confident most HOAs will permit back yard edible gardens? Will they approve us cutting down several trees to increase the sunlight reaching the backyard? I'm not familiar with HOAs and felt intimidated when I saw that Burke residents need board approval just to put up a basketball hoop, cut down a tree, or paint a fence.

Can anyone with direct experience speak to the likelihood of having unique improvement plans approved in a Fairfax County HOA?

It sounds like you are looking at Burke Centre, which does have restrictive HOA rules such as you have described here. Most of just plain Burke, other than the Lake Braddock neighborhood, does not have such rules and you can do what you like with your own property.

Lots of people in Burke have edible gardens, mostly in the back yard, but I have seen a few that have fruit trees, squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, and/or corn in the front yards, so it is definitely not unheard of. Burke is a really nice family-friendly community and it would certainly be nice for your wife to have such a short commute!

Good luck to you in finding a great place for your family!

OP,

I wonder if the Master Gardener program can give you advice on which neighborhoods are suitable for your plans:

http://offices.ext.vt.edu/fairfax/programs/anr/MG.html

Or maybe native plant societies, e.g.,:

http://vaworkinglandscapes.org/content/virginia-native-plant-society

You rock! I hope you and wife find a great place and realize this goal.

City of Fairfax.

We have tomatoes mixed in with flowers in our front beds. No HOA, nobody has said anything. We were harvesting one night and gave a few to neighbor we had never met walking by. She said she was going to come by more often!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Alexandria section of Fairfax County.

+1 we live here and have veggies in our front yard in large planter boxes. We've only received compliments and jealous sentiments from neighbors!

Thank you both for the input. Do either of you know any nearby neighbors who commute out to Burke or Fairfax on a regular basis? What do you think a typical reverse commute would be like? My wife has a great job lined up in Burke and doesn't like commuting by car for very long - even fifteen minutes is going to be stretching her.

Second PP here. Sorry, I commute into DC and most of my neighbors do the same or work close by. I did a few job interviews in Fairfax city/close by back in the spring though, and it took me about 45 min-1 hour in the AM. If your wife would hate commuting, definitely try to stick closer to Burke than here in Alexandria.

Anonymous wrote:With that budget and trying to be near Burke, you should have an easy time finding a place that meets your needs. A real estate agent will help you identify neighborhoods w/o HOAs better than the crew on this site will. Also look out for neighborhoods with restrictive covenants. I don't think they're common, but in our heavily wooded Annandale neighborhood, you wouldn't be able to cut down all the trees you'd need to remove for what you want to do.

OP here. We really like the Annandale neighborhoods we've looked at outside the beltway, and are willing to tailor some of our landscape ambitions to fit the available sunlight on the property. For example, we might end up growing a lot of shade loving varieties of berries and herbs if the tree canopy is not able to be modified. Does anyone have any advice about how to learn about restrictive covenants on a particular Fairfax county property? Thanks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can live anywhere. Choose a house with a larger back yard and smaller front. Just do your edible garden in the back yard.

Do you feel confident most HOAs will permit back yard edible gardens? Will they approve us cutting down several trees to increase the sunlight reaching the backyard? I'm not familiar with HOAs and felt intimidated when I saw that Burke residents need board approval just to put up a basketball hoop, cut down a tree, or paint a fence.

Can anyone with direct experience speak to the likelihood of having unique improvement plans approved in a Fairfax County HOA?

Here's some direct experience to the likelihood of having an Obama sign in your yard approved in a Fairfax County HOA:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/2013/02/09/d46f9bec-6652-11e2-93e1-475791032daf_story.html

I would steer clear.

Thanks for the heads up. I want to join a community where minor differences in preferences don't end up in lawsuits!

With that budget and trying to be near Burke, you should have an easy time finding a place that meets your needs. A real estate agent will help you identify neighborhoods w/o HOAs better than the crew on this site will. Also look out for neighborhoods with restrictive covenants. I don't think they're common, but in our heavily wooded Annandale neighborhood, you wouldn't be able to cut down all the trees you'd need to remove for what you want to do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can live anywhere. Choose a house with a larger back yard and smaller front. Just do your edible garden in the back yard.

Do you feel confident most HOAs will permit back yard edible gardens? Will they approve us cutting down several trees to increase the sunlight reaching the backyard? I'm not familiar with HOAs and felt intimidated when I saw that Burke residents need board approval just to put up a basketball hoop, cut down a tree, or paint a fence.

Can anyone with direct experience speak to the likelihood of having unique improvement plans approved in a Fairfax County HOA?

Here's some direct experience to the likelihood of having an Obama sign in your yard approved in a Fairfax County HOA:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/2013/02/09/d46f9bec-6652-11e2-93e1-475791032daf_story.html

I would steer clear.

Anonymous wrote:You can live anywhere. Choose a house with a larger back yard and smaller front. Just do your edible garden in the back yard.

Do you feel confident most HOAs will permit back yard edible gardens? Will they approve us cutting down several trees to increase the sunlight reaching the backyard? I'm not familiar with HOAs and felt intimidated when I saw that Burke residents need board approval just to put up a basketball hoop, cut down a tree, or paint a fence.

Can anyone with direct experience speak to the likelihood of having unique improvement plans approved in a Fairfax County HOA?

You can live anywhere. Choose a hour with a larger back yard and smaller front. Just do your edible garden in the back yard.

Maybe Clifton, off compton road?

Anonymous wrote:Arlington, Falls Church City, and close-in Fairfax neighborhoods will all support this.

Good to know! By close-in Fairfax do you mean Fairfax County inside the belt-way, or neighborhoods surrounding the city of Fairfax?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Alexandria section of Fairfax County.

+1 we live here and have veggies in our front yard in large planter boxes. We've only received compliments and jealous sentiments from neighbors!

Thank you both for the input. Do either of you know any nearby neighbors who commute out to Burke or Fairfax on a regular basis? What do you think a typical reverse commute would be like? My wife has a great job lined up in Burke and doesn't like commuting by car for very long - even fifteen minutes is going to be stretching her.

Anonymous wrote:You didn't bad mouth anyone, OP. People on DCUM can be ridiculous (and often nasty).

I applaud you for your landscaping plans. It sounds tremendous, beautiful and much better for the environment than grass.

Do you have a landscaper already? Maybe looking at their portfolio will help you figure out where the kindred spirits live. Good luck.

Thank you so much, previous poster. We are planning to hire a permaculture landscape design architect based in Philadelphia, so this will be only his second project in the DMV area. (The first was a temporary display for the national botanical gardens) That said, I think your idea is a good one; I just went online to search for similar landscape designers in the DC area, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out about the Northern Virginia Permaculture Guild with over 200 members: http://www.meetup.com/Northern-Virginia-Permaculture-Guild/

I also found this company, Organic Edible Gardens, LLC that sounds like a good fit to contact: http://www.fixr.com/sp.organic-edible-gardens-llc.html