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FarmFoodFamily
🌿 Launch pricing ends soon — lock in $27 before it rises to $47  |  23:59:59 remaining today
270+ pages · 39 chapters · Lots ¼ acre to 1+ acre

You Own More Land Than
You Know What to Do With.
That Changes Now.

The Large Lot Playbook is the complete property-to-landscape system for suburban homeowners with ¼ to 1+ acre — every phase, in the right order, backed by 15+ university sources.

Get Instant Access — $27 →
🔒 7-Day Action Guarantee 🎓 15+ University Sources 📄 Instant PDF Download
⭐ 270+ Pages
HOUSE FIRE ZONE KITCHEN GARDEN N
The Large Lot Playbook Kimberly Crawford · farmfoodfamily.com
🌿 Instant Download
39 Chapters · 38 Diagrams
270+
Pages of Actionable Systems
15+
University Extension Sources
38
Original Diagrams
8
Bonus Excel Worksheets
39
Chapters, All Sequenced
Research drawn from: Virginia Tech · Iowa State Extension · EPA WaterSense · UC Cooperative Extension · University of Nebraska · Rutgers · University of Illinois · Dr. Doug Tallamy, University of Delaware

You Know Something’s Off. You Just Can’t Name It.

Large-lot ownership looks like freedom. For most people, it quietly becomes a second job.

1
Layer 1 — The Symptom

You spend every Saturday maintaining a yard you never actually use.

Mowing takes 2.5 hours. Weeding takes another hour. By the time you’re done, the afternoon is gone and the back half of the property still looks exactly like it did when you moved in — open, undefined, and vaguely embarrassing when neighbors walk by.

2
Layer 2 — The Consequence

The $74,000 quote. The $1,400 Home Depot run that produced nothing. The “we’ll do it next spring” loop — now in year three.

You either can’t afford to do it all at once, or you’ve spent money on the wrong things in the wrong order. Without a sequence, every dollar is a gamble. And because large lots have five times the surface area of a standard yard, the stakes of getting it wrong are five times higher.

3
Layer 3 — The Identity Wound

You’re starting to wonder if the property was a mistake.

Not because you can’t handle it. But because nothing you’ve tried has added up to a coherent landscape. You bought this land because you wanted a different kind of life outside. Instead you have a larger version of the maintenance you were trying to escape.

“You’re not bad at this. You were handed a large-lot problem and given standard-lot advice. Those are not the same situation, and they do not have the same solutions.”

KC
Kimberly Crawford
Landscape Architect, researcher, and author at farmfoodfamily.com
Landscape Architect (B.S., UC Berkeley) & Agroecologist (M.S., UC Santa Cruz), 15+ years working large-lot and farm-to-table properties.
The Dream

Large-lot clients come to me with the same picture: real land, enough space for the outdoor life they’d been picturing for years. A place where kids can run, where they can grow food, where there’s room to build something lasting.

The Reality

What most of them get instead is a stretch of undefined lawn and a creeping sense that no one knows what to do with it. Every decision raises three more questions, because most advice out there was written for a quarter-acre suburban lot, not a property this size.

The Struggle

The first contractor quote lands in the tens of thousands. Families say no and try to DIY it. A weekend at the home improvement store produces a pile of materials no one can place correctly, because there’s no plan. Year one: “we’ll do it next spring.” Year two: the same phrase. Year three: someone finally asks what the point of the property was if it never gets used.

The Dark Night
“I’ve stood with more than one client at dusk, looking at an acre of undefined grass that had swallowed three years of weekends, hearing the same realization every time: we bought a maintenance schedule, not a life.“
The Turn

The fix never starts with plants. It starts with water — where it enters, where it pools, where it leaves. You can’t build anything until you understand where the water goes. That’s not landscaping. That’s physics. Everything in this guide follows from that principle, applied across dozens of large-lot properties.

The Results
2 hrs
Weekly maintenance ceiling — achievable by design, not effort
40–60%
Maintenance reduction from right-sizing turf (U of Nebraska)
270+
Pages — every system, sequenced
The Shift
“I’m not someone who figured out landscaping by talent. I’m someone who eventually had a real plan for a real large-lot property — and learned what order the decisions had to happen in. That’s what this book is.”

How The Large Lot Playbook Works

Five questions answered before you spend a single dollar.

What is it?

A 270+ page sequenced PDF system

7 parts, 39 chapters, 38 original diagrams, and 8 bonus Excel worksheets — covering every large-lot decision in the correct order.

Who is it for?

Homeowners with ¼ to 1+ acre who’ve stalled

If you’ve gotten a quote that shocked you, spent money on the wrong things first, or simply don’t know what order to do this in — this is your guide.

What does it do?

Replaces random decisions with a proven sequence

The Phase Sequence (Chapter 12) alone prevents thousands in rework. The right order is not obvious — getting it wrong on a large lot is expensive.

What’s inside?

Assessment → plan → budget → build → maintain

Each part produces a decision. Each decision is protected by the one before it. You leave with a working plan, not just a reading experience.

How long?

Read in a weekend. Use for the next decade.

First actionable result: your 7-zone property audit in Chapter 2, within the first hour of reading.

⚠️ This is NOT for you if…

  • You’re looking for a coffee-table book of beautiful yard photos with no steps to follow
  • You want a result that works without observation, planning, or any property-specific thinking
  • Your property is under 5,000 sq ft — the scale principles here are specific to large lots
  • You’re a professional landscape contractor looking for technical horticulture training

What The System Gives You

Four capabilities that produce four different kinds of results.

The Phase Sequence System

Install everything in the one order that protects earlier work from later phases — never redo a completed zone because you started the wrong thing first.

FunctionalA six-phase sequence from pre-construction permits through naturalized zone establishment — every task assigned to the right year.
EmotionalStop dreading the “next spring” loop. For the first time, you know what comes next and exactly why.
SocialYour yard makes visible progress every season — guests stop asking “what’s the plan” because the plan is obvious from looking at it.
IdentityYou become the homeowner who thinks in phases — not the one who reacts to whatever the property demands this weekend.

The Hardscaping Blueprint

Size every patio, path, pergola, and fence for your actual lot scale — not standard-lot dimensions that look wrong the day they’re installed.

FunctionalMinimum dimension tables across four lot sizes, plus the furniture test method so you never under-size a patio again.
EmotionalConfidence at the contractor meeting. You arrive with specifications, not hope.
SocialA correctly proportioned patio reads as designed. An undersized one reads as an afterthought — the difference is visible to every visitor.
IdentityYou understand your property at a scale most homeowners never reach, and the decisions reflect it.

The Planting System

Place trees, shrubs, and ground covers using ecological research — producing a landscape that gets better every year without increasing your maintenance load.

FunctionalMass planting protocol, native species by USDA region, ground cover conversion timeline, and the 30% turf rule that cuts mowing time by 40%.
EmotionalThe satisfaction of a landscape that improves while you sleep — because the plants are compounding, not demanding.
SocialNative plantings signal something about the owner. Neighbors notice. Buyers notice. Birds notice.
IdentityYou’re no longer maintaining land. You’re stewarding it — and that is a different relationship entirely.

The Maintenance Design Principle

Reach the 2-hour weekly ceiling through three design moves — not by trying harder, but by building a yard that requires less.

Functional4-step integrated weed control, seasonal calendar with CRITICAL window flags, mower selection calculator, and tick buffer installation protocol.
EmotionalSaturday mornings belong to you again — not to the yard.
SocialA well-maintained large lot that doesn’t consume its owner reads as success in a way that’s hard to articulate but impossible to miss.
IdentityYou designed the maintenance out. That’s a different category of homeowner than the one who’s just working harder.

The Saturday Morning You’re Working Toward

It’s the third Saturday of May — two years from now. You walk out through the back door before anyone else is awake, coffee in hand. The primary patio is exactly as large as it needed to be. The chairs are in the right place. The lawn is right-sized — just the section that actually gets used — and the robot mower handled it overnight without you thinking about it.

You sit down and look at the yard the way you imagined looking at it when you signed the papers on this property. The specimen oak you planted eighteen months ago has grown another two feet. The native planting beds along the back edge are filling in. Your neighbor walks over and says what he’s said three times this spring: “I don’t know how you did it.”

You know exactly how you did it. You did it in phases. In the right order. You did the assessment first, the drainage before the patio, the patio before the planting. Nothing had to be undone. The yard is better than it was a year ago, and it will be better next year than it is now. It compounds.

Dopamine
That oak is visibly taller than it was at planting. The progress is real and measurable — and you put it there.
Oxytocin
Your neighbor walked over because your yard creates the kind of morning that people want to be part of.
Serotonin
The yard is in order. The plan is working. There’s nowhere you need to be and nothing that’s behind schedule.
Endorphin
You spent two hours on maintenance last weekend — exactly what you planned — and the rest was yours.

Why This Guide Earns the Word “System”

Data Sources

15+ University Sources, Not Forum Advice

Every recommendation traces to peer-reviewed research or cooperative extension data: Virginia Tech’s landscape value studies, Iowa State’s pre-emergent timing research, EPA WaterSense irrigation data, Dr. Doug Tallamy’s native plant work, Rutgers deer resistance ratings, and more. Full source list in Appendix D.

Field-Tested

Built from 15+ Years Across Real Large-Lot Properties

The systems here came from applying, testing, and correcting across large suburban lots and farm-to-table properties — in real conditions, with real contractors, real costs, and real seasonal windows. Not a demonstration garden. Real backyards.

Verification

Every Statistic Traced to Its Source

No number in this guide is estimated or borrowed without verification. Each citation — every percentage, every cost range, every research finding — is attributed to its actual source. If we can’t source it, it’s not in the book. Appendix D lists them all.

Origin

farmfoodfamily.com — Real Decision-Making, Not Aspiration

Kimberly Crawford writes about the real decisions suburban homeowners face with larger properties. The Large Lot Playbook is the guide she needed and couldn’t find: designed specifically for the scale, cost, and sequencing challenges that standard-lot advice doesn’t address.

Everything Included

Value = (Outcome Clarity × Correct Sequence) ÷ (Years of Trial and Error × Wrong Decisions)

📘 The Large Lot Playbook PDF — 270+ pages, 39 chapters, 38 diagrams$37
📊 8 Bonus Excel Worksheets — budget tracker, irrigation planner, seasonal calendar, and more$27
📋 Contractor Vetting Checklist — 3 trade-specific question sets with red flagsincluded
🌿 Native Plants by USDA Region — 4-region starter lists with ecological notesincluded
📐 Quick-Reference Sizing Chart — all 16 elements across all four lot sizesincluded
Total Value$64
Everything Included — One Price
$47
$27
Save 43% — Launch Pricing
  • The Large Lot Playbook PDF — 270+ pages, 39 chapters, 38 diagrams
  • 8 Bonus Excel Worksheets — ready to use alongside every chapter
  • 4 Appendices — sizing chart, native plants, contractor checklist, full sources
  • 7-Day Action Guarantee — complete Chapter 2, request a refund if it doesn’t deliver
  • Instant download — access in your inbox within 60 seconds of purchase
Get Instant Access — $27 →
🔒 Secure Checkout 📧 Instant Delivery ✅ 7-Day Action Guarantee
Own more than one yard problem?

Get this guide — plus 7 more — in the Complete Yard Transformation Bundle

This guide is one of 8 complete systems covering design, drainage rescue, budget projects, narrow lots, large lots, low-maintenance yards, dog-proofing, and native planting — 1,600+ pages and 20+ bonus worksheets in one download.

$208$67
Upgrade to the Full Bundle →

Save 68% · Instant download · Covered by the 7-Day Action Guarantee

7
Day Action
Guarantee

farmfoodfamily.com
The Large Lot Playbook

You’ve Been Let Down Before. This Works Differently.

If you’ve purchased a guide that turned out to be vague, unfocused, or designed for a different kind of property — that skepticism is reasonable. The Large Lot Playbook is built on one principle: if the system doesn’t deliver a clear next action within the first chapter, it hasn’t done its job.

The guarantee is action-gated, not time-gated. Complete the 7-zone property audit in Chapter 2. If you cannot produce an actionable assessment of your own property using that system — and you email me showing you tried — I’ll refund your purchase. No forms, no waiting period, no argument.

L1

7-Day Action Guarantee

Complete Chapter 2’s 7-zone audit. If the system doesn’t deliver a working property assessment, request a full refund within 7 days with your completed audit attempt.

L2

Lifetime Access to Updates

Future editions delivered to original purchasers at no charge via your Gumroad purchase link.

L3

Email Support for 30 Days

Property-specific questions answered within 48 hours. Contact: hello@farmfoodfamily.com

L4

Technical Issue Resolution — Immediate

Broken download link, missing file, or delivery problem? Resolved immediately, no guarantee window applies.

Is This Right for You?

✅ This IS for you if…

  • You own ¼ to 1+ acre and don’t have a working plan for more than a third of it
  • You’ve gotten a contractor quote that shocked you and want to understand what drives the cost
  • You’ve spent money on landscaping without being sure it was in the right order
  • You want to cut your weekend maintenance time significantly — and keep it cut permanently
  • You’re willing to spend a few hours reading before spending money on the property
  • You want research-backed reasoning for decisions, not “I saw this on Pinterest”

✕ This is NOT for you if…

  • You want a quick fix that works without observation, planning, or any site-specific thinking
  • Your lot is under 5,000 sq ft — these scale principles don’t apply to small urban yards
  • You’ve already built a phase sequence, know your drainage patterns, and have a working maintenance system — you’re past this guide’s audience
  • You’re a professional landscaper looking for advanced technical trade training — this is written for motivated homeowners

Questions Before You Decide

I barely have time for the yard I have now. Will this take hours to implement?
The guide is designed for people in exactly that position. The first deliverable — the 7-zone property audit in Chapter 2 — takes less than an hour. You don’t need a free weekend to start. And Part Seven (Solving the Maintenance Problem) specifically exists to design time back into your schedule permanently. The 2-hour weekly maintenance ceiling is the target, not the starting point.
I’ve read landscaping books before and they’re all the same general advice.
Most landscaping books are written for standard suburban lots. This one is written specifically for ¼-acre-and-above properties — the scale challenges, cost structures, sequencing requirements, and maintenance math are genuinely different at this size. The Phase Sequence, per-lot-size sizing tables, the 30% turf rule, and the hybrid fencing approach are not in standard landscaping guides because they’re not relevant at standard scale.
Is $27 worth it for a PDF?
A single wrong decision on a large lot — planting before drainage, installing a patio at standard-lot size, full-perimeter premium fencing when hybrid would have done the same job — typically costs $2,000–$10,000 to correct. The Phase Sequence chapter alone, applied to one phase of your project, pays for this guide several hundred times over. The question isn’t whether the PDF is worth $27. It’s whether a plan is worth having before you spend the first $5,000.
What if this doesn’t work for my specific property?
The 7-Day Action Guarantee exists for this concern. Complete Chapter 2’s property audit on your actual land. If the system can’t produce a working assessment of your specific property, contact me with your completed audit attempt and I’ll refund you in full. The system is designed for real properties with real variables — sloped lots, heavy clay, deer pressure, coastal, arid. If your conditions are covered in the guide (they almost certainly are) and the method still doesn’t deliver, you don’t pay.
Why $27 specifically? Is the price going up?
$27 is the launch price, and yes — it will increase to $47 after the launch window closes. The countdown in the announcement bar shows today’s remaining time at this price. The decision to price at $27 during launch is deliberate: it’s low enough that price shouldn’t be the reason someone doesn’t solve a $50,000 property problem.
I’m still thinking about it. What’s the downside of waiting?
Two concrete things. First, the price rises to $47 after the launch window — you’ll pay 74% more for the same guide. Second: if you’re anywhere between January and May in the northern hemisphere, you’re inside the planning window that determines what your landscape does this season. Decisions made in March have seasonal consequences. Decisions made in June have next-year consequences. The guide is most valuable when you still have time to act on it.
What format is the guide? Can I use it on my tablet or print it?
The guide is a standard PDF — readable on any device using any PDF viewer. The 8 bonus worksheets are Excel (.xlsx) files, compatible with Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, and Google Sheets. All files download immediately after purchase via Gumroad. There is no DRM — you can print the guide if you prefer a physical copy, and save the worksheets to any cloud storage you use.

What Large-Lot Homeowners Say

⚡ Fast Win
★★★★★

“I did the 7-zone property audit from Chapter 2 on a Saturday morning — took about 45 minutes — and for the first time in three years I had a written list of what was actually wrong with the property. Not a vague sense. An actual list. That alone was worth the price.”

MR
Mark R.
Columbus, OH — ¾-acre property
🌱 Full Transformation
★★★★★

“We were two years into a ‘temporary’ state that felt permanent. After reading Parts Three and Four, we finally had a number and a sequence. The patio went in last fall — correctly sized, correct base depth. It’s the first thing we’ve done that we know won’t have to be redone.”

JL
Jennifer L.
Nashville, TN — ½-acre property
💭 Overcame Doubt
★★★★★

“I almost didn’t buy it because I thought ‘I’ve read landscaping stuff before.’ It is genuinely not the same. The scale-specific sections — the per-lot-size dimension tables, the 30% turf rule, the hybrid fencing strategy — these are not things I’d seen anywhere. My property is not a small lot. This guide is written for that reality.”

DK
David K.
Charlotte, NC — 1.1-acre property

The Property You Bought Deserves the Plan You Didn’t Have.

270+ pages · 39 chapters · 38 diagrams · 8 bonus worksheets · 7-Day Action Guarantee

$47
$27
Get Instant Access — $27 →
🔒 Secure Checkout via Gumroad 📧 Instant PDF Delivery ✅ 7-Day Action Guarantee

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