Le Potager (The Kitchen Garden) and the Slow Food Movement

I am working in a garden that is close to 500 years old. The romantic gardener in me believes it's as if I can feel the sweat and hands of the countless other gardeners who have tilled this earth. The biologist in me, however, rations that the beauty of this soil stems from its intensively worked structure and high cation-exchange capacity, resultant of year after year of soil amendments, beneficial root exudates, and a rotational cycle of ever present Rhizobia nodules helping to convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia, via nitrogenase and the process of hydrolysis.

In short, this is some of the richest soil I have ever worked with, and I have worked with many different soils. Host to over one thousand different types of fruits and vegetables, the 15^th century design of the kitchen garden at Châteaux Valmer is classical in nature. Tall walls covered in espalier pruned fruit trees - an ancient agricultural practice of controlling woody plant growth by pruning branches to a frame (often along a wall or fence) – surround the garden, whose interior is laid out in geometrically pleasing designs. Rounded edges and plant growth fringe the more rigid structures of the pathways and trellises, creating a beautifully balanced design.

Flanked by the grand canal and a forested hillside, and to the North by the beautiful view of the châteaux's gardens, le potager is breathtaking. On one hectare (107,639 square feet or approximately 2.5 acres), four squares lined with boxwood are subdivided into plots, surrounding a circular basin and fountain. Beneficial wildlife are strongly encouraged as honey-bearing perennials border each and every patch, giving homes to both pollinators and predators. Bees, ladybugs, birds, hedgehogs, and frogs scamper everywhere, and throughout my working day I have the pleasure of being visited by them.

My day begins early caring for the chickens. They run free in a large netted area opposite the garden's most Western wall. They seem to have adjusted to me interrupting their morning schedule, and will now follow me around their yard as I scan their roosts for eggs. Chickens are one of the gardener's best friends, and serve as a great link in the garden food chain. They eat pests, provide manure, and integrate food waste into their diets. It is just one example of how, as with all organic agriculture, it seems other animals sometimes play the most essential roles. Realistically, human gardener's themselves are more like conductors, orchestrating a symphony of other non-human, living, and interconnected parts.

For the rest of the day I work with whichever crop demands the most attention. With so many varietals and specific crop requirements for optimal growth, gardener's are very busy people, and our work is never done. The potatoes must be mounded, the tomatoes must be pruned, the squash must be trellised, the grass must be cut, the hedges trimmed, the tools sharpened, the rows and pathways weeded, the leeks harvested, this pest tended to, that pest tended to, and so on. Here in le potager we do this all by hand, without the use of motorized equipment or chemical inputs.

This is one of the many reasons why the organic food movement is slow to replace it's newer, industrial counterpart – the issue of labor. Three farmers aided by tractors and chemicals can properly tend to a few thousand acres of a conventional crop, while one acre of organic plantings would require three if not more laborers. It is partially how such revolutions as the “Slow Food Movement” earn their name. Slow, however, is not always a bad thing. Slow Food is an international movement promoted as an alternative to “fast food,” that strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine by encouraging the farming of plants, seeds, and livestock characteristic to the surrounding ecosystem.

With goals of sustainable foods and the promotion of local small businesses, the Slow Food movement began in 1986 in Italy by the organization Agricola, which worked to resist the opening of a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps in Rome. In 1989 the founding manifesto of the international Slow Food movement was signed in Paris, France, with delegates from 15 different countries. Today there are Slow Food branches all over the world, slowly but surely gaining footing. Slow Food USA is the second largest. You may recognize the names of Alice Waters (the owner of Chez Panisse and an activist, author, and creator of the Edible Schoolyard) or Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore's Dilemna and a self-proclaimed “liberal foodie intellectual”) as two of the Slow Food USA's most notable members. If you are interested in becoming a member or discovering more of what the Slow Food movement is doing near you, click on the link below.

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/

I have often wondered how the term “conventional agriculture” can call itself that, when it is in fact not historically customary. Organic permaculture based agriculture has been practiced around the world for centuries past, essentially since we adopted agrarianism into our human makeup. Not until the beginning of the 1900s did we shift to such a mechanization and industrialization of our agricultural systems. While conventional agriculture has comparatively not been around for very long, we can already see from the 100 years of its adoption that it has both short-term benefits and long-term consequences.

The consequences of industrial agriculture are what makes the Slow Food movement and organic farming efforts a necessary course for today, especially if we have an eye towards the future. We must re-learn how to produce food in ways that resist replicating the historical, environmental, social, economic, and health oriented consequences of industrial agriculture. As Madame Alix de Saint Venant, the landscape architect I am working with in le potager says, “the ingredients for a thriving kitchen garden are time, curiosity, and passion.” If we can manage to regain our curiosity for the agricultural methods practiced throughout history, while developing generations that are passionate about doing so, we will be able to revolutionize the way we eat, and in turn, make a very broad and lasting effect on the world we live in. For food is a most powerful human common denominator, in that everyone must eat, and so can be used as an incredibly far-reaching and revolutionary tool.

A Visit to Le Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire - The Birthplace of Vertical Gardens

The Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire has been recognized as a “jardin remarquable” (remarkable garden) by the Ministry of Culture. My most recent evening trip there made clear why. Centuries old structures meet with a variety of impeccably maintained landscapes, from richly antiquated gardens to extremely modern installations. Created by landscape architects, artists, botanists, designers, and gardeners, they have all been invited by the Domaine or selected as winning entries for the international Garden Festival competition, held yearly on site.

It is a prime example of why in the industry we call such gardens “living museums.” A setting where time and place converge to create a historical, cultural, and aesthetically powerful experience. Walking through the compound the gardens become a work of art, stimulating imagination, respect, and a sensitivity to the beauty of the natural world. As I weaved through le potager (the kitchen garden), I came across a well known sight gaining momentum around the world: a vertical garden.

Presented for the first time by Patrick Blanc at the Garden Festival of Chaumont-sur-Loire in 1994, vertical plant walls make it possible to introduce biodiversity into urban cityscapes. This is an exciting idea as we continue into our human-centric Anthropocene era. The migration of human populations into urban areas demands a landscape design that will conserve, create, and embrace the natural world. Because cities do not exist as islands in isolation, and instead use areas of land many factors larger than their own surface footprint, properly and ecologically designed cities will perhaps offer the best hope for the survival of Earth's species and ecosystems.

Robert Krulwich at NPR made the famous comparison of how cities use land area when stating that “a megacity that housed the entire population of the world at a similar concentration to the density of Paris would occupy close to 350,000 square kilometers, or 3 U.S. States. But if these citizens lived side-by-side in ranch houses, they would require an additional four planets-worth of land to satisfy their resource demands.” As we do not have four planets, it is clear that the urban landscape demands an efficient design that goes beyond housing many people in one locale. Urban landscapes must be designed in ecologically efficient ways, so that the opportunity of regenerative or sustainable cities can be realized.

This transition will involve incredible shifts in not only how we view urban systems design, but also the way we choose to live our lives (a very small sentence for such a large actuality). Current urban ecology efforts to study the city and biophysical interactions within it, much like the traditional approach to ecosystems research, offer multiple solutions. The efforts of hobby farmers, beekeepers, urban agrivists, and the like also offer solutions. Each and every urban farm, rooftop farm, abandoned lot grown over by guerilla gardeners, and balcony or fire-scape with a few pots on it is also a great step in the right direction. What steps are you taking?

If you are interested in what cities around the world are doing currently to become more ecologically efficient, check out the link below.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-cities-go-green/

From Dirt to Plate - Harvesting Wild Foods

As a gardener I value taming and organizing plants. For every plant there is an optimal spacing pattern that allows for sufficient growth, and so edible gardenscapes often develop a characteristically uniform layout. Harvesting wild foods is different. You simply walk along the road and gather your meal (of course, making sure to know that you understand what is and what is not toxic). It evokes an almost brazen feeling for the detail-oriented fine gardener in me, and there's nothing more rewarding than enjoying what you've prepared with your own two hands (after, of course, the plant has done all the hard work and prepared itself for you).

We gathered the edible Elderberry, Sambucus nigra, from along a river bend. The sun skipped in just long enough for us to leave our hiding place from the rain, beneath the tree canopy that lined our path. Strolling back through le potager (the kitchen garden), we set down our basket bounty in the wine cave. Here in the adjoining room we prepared an infusion. By steeping the elderberry flowers in water, straining the mixture into a bowl, and combining with sugar, we made our very own elderberry syrup. To this we added sparkling wine, and violà, vin mousseux avec fleur! We paired this with a nice local goat cheese coated in walnut oil and wild mint from the property, atop a bed of edible rose petals. Mes compliments au chef.

While enjoying lunch my mind wandered to the term “wild foods.” We were once wild ourselves, living a nomadic existence that traveled in pursuit of our food, whether it was an animal by hoof or a plant by seasonal migration. Today we have mechanized food much in the same way we have everything else, with great consequences and benefits. Our adoption of agriculture has allowed us to become the humans that we are today, so what would would the re-adoption of gathering bring to our culture? As my mind wandered deeper into the philosophy behind our agricultural society, it became increasingly apparent that the benefits of knowing how to harvest and prepare local, wild foods go far beyond bemusing the modern-day palate.

Imagine if the surrounding landscape was your supermarket. Having an intimate connection with the food we eat allows us to better care for the landscapes that provide it. In this way, increased access to productive landscapes is a crucial step in re-defining our relationship with the land. Today this concept can be seen by our growing interest with wild foods, urban farming, community gardens, backyard kitchen gardens, and overall a more transparent food system. For before the idea of “farm to table” there was “dirt to plate,” a concept that, as seen from our workshop today, still brings people around a table to eat. After first walking through the surrounding landscape together, touching and smelling and tasting the plant life, awakening our inner (albeit forgotten) gatherer. When we increase our connection and access to the land in positive and provisional ways, we savor it. And this is a very, very good thing.

From San Francisco to Château de Valmer

When seen from 30,000 feet high the enormity of our human scale settles mentally like thick particulate across the changing landscape, just as our own regional patterns of population and land use do. By plane, bus, car, train, and foot I traveled for 32 hours, my mind whirring from the geographical and cultural slideshow. Heading East from my Pacific flanked Bay Area home I flew over patchwork diagrams of shifting agriculture, open plains, and fanning mountain ranges. I reached Chicago, its dense urban grid outpouring into industrial lines of trade, framed by suburbs and the massive sprawling plantings of the Bread Basket. I continued East, crossing the Atlantic to land in Paris in the rain. The antiquated radial layout of a city built on top of itself for centuries was impressive, with modern day advertisements stuck to it like tags on the bottom of a historically and architecturally priceless shoe - the union of centuries old cityscape with present day.

“Vous êtes Alix?” I asked the woman wearing pink rain boots as I exited the St. Pierre des corps station, outside of Tours. Madame Alix de Saint Venant, a landscape architect and my supervisor for the next month, grabbed one of my bags as she walked me to her car. Apologizing for the state of her “gardener's car,” I assured her that my own looked the same, complete with remnants of soil and the occasional shovel. With jet-lag notably written on my face, we drove through the Loire Valley to the Château de Valmer.

I am currently sitting inside "le ferme" (the farmhouse) of this château, a sixteenth century manor atop an alkaline hillside along a bend in the Loire River, just outside of Chançay, France. Overlooking vineyards, Renaissance styled terraced gardens, an expansive Kitchen Garden host to over 1,000 different species, and Gaia – an aging weimaraner who first greeted me at the gate. I have spent the day gardening with Sebastien, sowing seeds and comparing species. I do not speak French and he does not speak English but we both speak garden, and with my French dictionary and hand signals we get along. With extreme gratitude this is my new home for the next month, and I could not be happier. Je me sens merveilleux!

Nature as Teacher - What Can We Learn?

The natural world is a living system engineered by eons of evolutionary forces. In this way, nature teaches us what works and what does not. It shows us that successful systems work to sustain themselves. They embrace change, harness diversity, and adapt accordingly. Their success depends upon the interchangeability of their inputs and outputs, their cycles of death and growth, and their use and creation of resources. Nature as teacher, therefore, can teach us how to effectively interact with each other and with the world at large. 

So, what can we learn? By emulating nature's design we discover sustainable solutions. Just as leaves first showed us how to harness solar energy, the more we look to the natural world for answers to our modern day questions, the better our designs will be. In this way, biomimicry (literally meaning to mimic the biological world) offers enormous potential to transform our landscapes, buildings, products, and systems. For every problem that we currently face, there will be precedents within nature that we can study. 

How can we apply this idea of biomimicry into the design of our landscapes? What if the built environment worked to sustain itself? While pondering these questions, I came across a website created by Janine Benyus and team, who started the Biomimicry Guild. An open-source database of biological literature organized by design and engineering function, "Asknature.org" is well worth a visit. You can start asking questions by clicking the link below. 

asknature.org