Gardens in front yards are OK

Talk about misplaced values.  So you don't have much of a yard and your house faces south, or like TPP almost the whole back yard is shaded.  So what do you do?  Well, you plant your vegetable garden in the front, but then  you are informed that this violates an appearance code in your town.  However, the good news side of this situation is that Miami Shores which sounds like a chi-chi sort of place, changed its mind and now allows vegetable gardens in front yards.  Great cheers for this glimmer of gardening enlightenment.  
Where did the idea come from that a monoculture of grass is aesthetically pleasing, but a hedge row of zucchini squash isn't?  Now TPP thinks that such gardens must be well attended and not allowed to turn into an unkept mess.  Having grown up in a part of New York where citizens of Italian background were plentiful, many cultivated favorite vegetables using their entire yard.  And they were lovely and well cared for.  TPP has considered front yard vegetable gardening, but there are already a lot of plants there, and mostly sun remains a bit of a limiting commodity.  
One of our neighbors just died, too young, after being ill for a long time, but his yard was rather small, and eventually all the lawn disappeared into a diversity of garden plants; OK no vegetables, but also no grass.  The only difference would be whether you cultivate a tomato or two versus a magnolia.  Tough choice.