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Mr. Haeg, who was raised in suburban Minneapolis, now lives in a geodesic dome in East Los Angeles with a subterranean sprayed-concrete cave worthy of Dr. No. Covered in mouse-brown asphalt shingles, it dates to 1984; he found it on the Internet in 2000. Soon after he moved in, he began cultivating edible plants like kale and pineapple guava in his terraced garden, and he surrounded the dome with trellises for grapevines.

Mr. Haeg is perhaps best known in Los Angeles for his Sundown Salons, which transform his three-level, shag-carpeted home into an alternative cultural space that attracts artists, other architects, recent M.F.A. graduates and assorted gadflies. The theme and tenor of the once-a-month gatherings, which began shortly after he moved in, have varied; they’ve included traditional literary gatherings as well as gay and lesbian performance art and all-night knitting and “make your own pasta animal” sessions.

Mr. Haeg has taught at several colleges, including the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., where he oversaw his students’ design and construction of Gardenlab, a campus community garden, beginning in 2001. He is now designing a house for a film executive in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles and a rooftop garden for an apartment complex in downtown Los Angeles.

Mr. Haeg selected Salina as his first Edible Estates site for its heartland symbolism — it is close to the geographic center of the country — and found his first subjects, Stan and Priti Cox, through the Land Institute, a Salina-based organization dedicated to ecologically sustainable agriculture, where Mr. Cox worked as a plant geneticist.

“I didn’t feel any emotion,” Ms. Cox, 38, said of her defunct sod expanse. “It was monotonous. Now my senses are stimulated.”

Mr. Haeg is planning seven more Edible Estates sites. (Coming soon: Baltimore and Minneapolis.) Though he lacks training in landscape architecture or horticulture, he has been shrewd in his recruitment of plant-literate people with sunny, treeless front yards.

So far each “estate” has been planted to reflect its region: the Cox garden in Kansas is heavy with okra and corn, with a smattering of bitter gourd, pimento and curry trees in deference to Ms. Cox’s Indian roots. The Fotis’ yard in California is resplendent with pomelos, oranges, mandarins and other citrus fruit.

Mr. Haeg regards the Edible Estates project as something of a manifesto. He fantasizes about setting off a “chain reaction” among gardeners that would challenge Americans to rethink their lawns — which he insists on calling “pre-edible” landscapes — though he knows the chances are slim. Still, he wants to make a point.

“Diversity is healthy,” he said. “The pioneers were ecologically-minded out of sheer necessity, because they had to eat what they grew. But we’ve lost touch with the garden as a food source.”

What is theoretical for Mr. Haeg, of course, has become everyday reality for Michael Foti, who must live with his edible estate and arrive home from a long day at the office to prune and weed and smite caterpillars into the wee hours — without pesticide, he is quick to note.

Mr. Foti is taking the garden one day at a time, A.A. style, a bit uneasy at the thought of waning daylight. The biggest pest, he noted, is “inertia.”

“We sometimes joke that it’s the garden that ate our marriage,” he said, then added wearily: “I do feel a certain pressure not to fail. The whole neighborhood is watching.”