Farmcore

Barley, a dog, stands in front of a series of shiny metal planters containing a shrubbery and edible vegetables.

Of the various residential aesthetics I come across on my walks, “farmcore” is the one I find most perplexing. I’m happy to live and let live, of course; people can go wild with their yards as far as I’m concerned. I just don’t quite get why you would want your residential garden to look like a working farm. In my admittedly limited experience, modern farms are very much working environments, full of heavy equipment, paint that needs a fresh coat, and a patina of mud spatter that folks are too busy to bother to clean off. It’s a functional environment, not a demonstrative, performative one. So what is someone performing that aesthetic looking to communicate? It makes about as much aesthetic sense to me as fashioning your yard in the style of an oil refinery or a quarry.