I grew zucchini in my front beds for a few years until I got the back ready. I could hear people walking their dogs talk about the huge tropical looking leaves and pretty bright flowers, I was surprised at how few recognized them! The plants hid the zukes themselves really well.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard is pretty, and since very few people eat it they probably won't know it's a veggie. Don't be surprised if your HOA makes you tear it all out.

I agree with Swiss Chard as a choice. Pepper plants are easy to grow and some varieties can be very ornamental. If you have the room, Okra plants can be attractive, especially the red varieties. For the front yard, it might be best to select dwarf varieties, as some okra plants can reach 6-8 feet tall. I like the idea of a front-yard garden and suspect if it's well maintained and attractive your HOA won't object. My HOA is pretty laid back. Sadly, they've taken a hard stand on chickens, so no fresh eggs for me....

how about blue berries? Maybe a couple dwarf fruit trees pruned backyard orchard style. Although your neighbors may stop and steal your food, LOL In my experience HOAs only enforce the rules when someone complains long enough. I doubt there is much in the rules that eludes to growing edibles just probably to make sure you yard is taken care of.

I'm a huge herb fan. Have you considered herbs or are you going for real food? My sage and lavender both look like small shrubs. Thyme creeps along anywhere (i have some lining my front walk). Fun for kiddos because you can nibble herbs right off of the plant!

Many edible plants are beautiful and a lot of them have been mentioned. However, amost types can go downhill and look crappy at a certain point. You likely could get away with more edible crops in the front yard if you are careful to remove any foliage that starts looking crappy, and then also by removing any plants that start looking awful from disease or once they are past their prime. I think that a person can get away with edible crops in a front yard much more easy if they keep them exceptionally well-groomed and well-maintained.

Check out Rosalind Creasey's book "Edible Landscaping". There's a really old version from decades ago and then an updated edition from around 2010. Her edible landscapes are so beautiful that many times people do not realize how many edibles are mixed in with the ornamental plants. In the 2010 edition of the book, there's photos of different edible landscapes she designed from across the country, which is great for getting ideas. Her book series about rainbow gardening, i.e. The Rainbow Pepper Garden, and others in the series first got me started a long time ago on growing garden veggies in a wide array of color.

I like peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, bush green beans, Swiss Chard, lettuce (especially when you mix in red varieties for contrast with green varieties), strawberries, blackberries, fruit trees, grapes and all kinds of herbs in front yards. Blueberries will work if you have acidic soil or create a bed with highly acidic soil for them, or you can grow them in large containers where you have total control over the soil-less mix in which they are growing. Squash plants can get big and gangly and flop around so might be best in a back yard or in a side yard with prettier plants in front of them. Icebox watermelons have smaller leaves than regular melons and are gorgeous as long as the plants stay lush and healthy. They produce smaller melons and lots of them. I grow 6 or 7 varieties of icebox melons every year. Bush cucumbers also would work well as long as you keep the foliage looking good (which can be a challenge in wet years when disease predominates). Because the cole crops (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, etc.) have such issues with cabbage loopers and imported cabbage worms, they likely would work better hidden away in a back yard. Eggplant plants are gorgeous if you don't have a flea beetle issue with them, and you can grow eggplant varieties that fruit in many colors: dark purple, violet, white, orange, green, and even purple-and-white streaked.

Remember edible flowers too like violets and nasturtiums. Vining crops like sweet potatoes can be used as a edible ground cover. I just bet the HOA lets people grow ornamental sweet potatoes in their front yards, so how could they object to you growing edible sweet potatoes in your front yard? The only difference in the edible sweet potatoes and the ornamental sweet potatoes is that the edible ones were selected and perhaps refined by breeding for the quality of their tubers, and the ornamental one were selected and refined because of the quality of their foliage. To me, a bed full of edible sweet potatoes is just as beautiful as a bed of ornamental sweet potatoes.

The sky is the limit if you're not in an HOA neighborhood, but with an HOA, you should expect to encounter some degree of resistance. It just depends on how militant the HOA Board happens to be.

I think that if you mix herbs, flowers and veggies together in a pleasing arrangement, a lot of folks won't even realize you're growing edibles out front. I like to mix begonias with pepper plants, with the taller pepper plants in back and the begonias in front. The lighter foliage of the begonias and their pink, red or white flowers look gorgeous with the dark green pepper plants behind them, for example. That's just one example of how you can mix edibles into ornamental plantings and have something that is very visually pleasing.

You also can grow edibles in very large containers mixed together with flowers and herbs. This would give you some flexibility because you could move the containers around to the back yard or side yard if the HOA starts giving you trouble about having the edibles in the front. There's a great book by Pamela Crawford called "Easy Container Combos: Vegetables and Flowers" with lots of photos of amazing containers where she has mixed in edibles with flowers. One of my favorite combinations of edibles in containers is to use dwarf cherry tomato plants and to mix in with them some lettuce plants, marigolds and something more upright like blue salvia. Add a small ornamental sweet potato plant or two, and the sweet potato vines will fill in the space after all the lettuce is harvested and removed.

Swiss Chard in various colors is strikingly beautiful and will work with other brightly colored veggies and flowers. You harvest the outer leaves as they grow, so there's always newer fresher leaves coming along that look picture perfect.

I probably wouldn't try sweet corn in the front yard. It probably looks too much like a crop for you to get away with growing it out front, but other than it, I cannot think of much else that would be objectionable to a reasonable HOA board. The problem is that some HOA boards are not reasonable at all. Good luck.

Dawn

The way to do it is not to make it look like a veggie garden. Plant stuff in a way that looks like landscaping. Don't use a chicken wire fence

I use golden oregano as a living mulch in my front beds. I grow rosemary as one of my shrubs. I've planted bright lights chard and kale together in among the perennials. We have a pretty good HOA here and I haven't heard anyone complain. But I love to work in the beds, so it usually looks pretty. I've mixed in violas, which are also edible. And then, of course, there is the Hyacinth Bean!