The Chatelaine's Keys

Sharon October 15th, 2009

Today marks the start of our Farm and Garden Design class, and I thought I’d start with the process before the process, if that makes any sense - with the dreaming that preceeds design. 

So close your eyes.  Or first, open them, and look at your property - or your friendly neighbor’s property, or your church’s lot, or your community garden plot.  Now that you’ve got it in your head, close your eyes.  And take what’s there and add on - what do you want to see?  Look at it closely.  Smell it. Taste it.  Listen to it.

What do you see?  A balcony that is covered with twining vines dripping grapes and hardy kiwis, with tomatoes and peppers, lettuce and herbs filling the corners, and scented flowers attracting butterflies and hummingbirds?  Do you see yourself on it, harvesting tomatoes and basil to go with that local mozzarella?

What do you see? A community garden plot that integrates flowers with food - borders of pot marigold and lavender around tall okra and sweet corn, pole bean tepees in front of a short hedge of blackberries, elder and honeyberries, and nasturtiums twining around the pumpkins.  Are you in it, watching the kids play with the children of other gardeners, while you make a salad of edible flowers and multicolored lettuces?

What do you see?  A patchwork of neighborhood gardens that you tend - a three sisters garden in your friend’s backyard, where her children help you twine the beans up the corn poles.  A perennial forest garden to be enjoyed by the neighborhood at your son’s school, where the kids devour blueberries and hide in the sunflowers?  A meadow of native prairie flowers in the front yard, attracting pollinators and wildlife.  A garden of roots and trees around in the back, and you invited everyone to a garden dinner, filling  your belly and your neighbors with sweet potatoe pie and plum tart.

What do you see?  A suburban backyard with a playset - and 10 raised beds, each filled with many meals worth of annual crops, and a chinese chestnut tree, that the children swing from and from which you harvest your winter’s nuts?  The birds nest in it, and the garden forms around its protective shape.  You see yourself planting seeds, while the little ones watch, and dig in their own patch, getting filthy and excited aboutt he possibilities of their earth.

What do you see?  An urban mini-farm on 1/10 acre - bees in their white boxes pollinate your dwarf apple trees, espaliered against the fence, chickens eat the weeds that poke up in the corners, rabbits feed the worms that feed your garden, and are fed in turn on stalks and scraps.  Meanwhile the lettuces wave like af flag and you walk with fragrant bundles to sell your herbs to the restaurant down the street.

What do you see?  A sunny half acre, filled with a medley of tropical plants - citrus, pomegranate, fig, banana, malinga.  Underneath the trees, grateful for their shade, run sweet potatoes and taro, while chile peppers and dryland corn fill a sunny corner.  Are you in it, watching the fish in your pond grow to dinner size, as the cat suns herself on a rock and dreams, just as you do, of a fish dinner.

What do you see?  A small farm of a few acres, with pigs that root out weeds and manure the ground and then feed your family, and chickens for eggs and a small woodlot, managed for mushrooms, coppiced wood and acorns for feed.  Every year you plant more trees, grow more crops, and new garden beds sprout like weeds.  There’s a sign at the end of the driveway reading “fresh eggs, raspberries” and the neighbors stop by to pick up your extras and trade neighborly gossip.

What do you see?  The family farm brought to life again - the land made productive again, the weeds cut back, the family brought back, swales built to catch precious water, with new crops and new techniques for making fertile space out of what seemed like a lost cause.  New hope, and the chance to work together again?  Do you see yourself, slowly, patiently planting new trees, repairing the tractor, laughing with your sister again?

What do you see?  Draft horses, pulling logs from the shady woodland, and a barn full of animals.  A business plan and a market for your lamb, your wool and your vegetables.  A diversity of plants and animals - life without monocultures.  A pond.  A quiet spot to rest, a kitchen full of peaches ready to can.  And you see yourself, at work, at rest, in the kitchen, on the land, but there, and present, and ready.

I don’t claim these dreams are easy to enact, or that they will always come to fulfillment - I have dreams myself I haven’t finished - for terracing and beds, for plants and animals I’ve never yet gotten to.  But without a vision, without a dream, without asking that question “what do you see” we can’t begin to make it into something real.

Sharon

• garden design
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