permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

A Brief History of the UCSC Farm & Garden Projects
Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food System, UC at Santa Cruz
http://zzyx.ucsc.edu/casfs/about/fgstory.html

    "Alan Chadwick’s garden is a ‘garden of the mind’ as much as it
is of the soil, and like all genuinely inspired creations it has the power
to stir us to new dreams, to a new vision of what man and nature can do,
together."
    - Page Smith, UCSC Professor of History

   "This was the first UC effort to focus on sustainable agriculture,
commercial organic production methods, and the social issues associated
with developing a sustainable food system. "

The UC system is well known for its contributions to agriculture: the land
grant universities are recognized worldwide for research in such fields as
plant breeding, integrated pest management, and livestock care. Perhaps
less well known is a project that started on the UC Santa Cruz campus in
1967, when legendary English gardener Alan Chadwick broke ground for a
student garden.

In their own unique ways, the UCSC Garden Project (now the Alan Chadwick
Garden) and the UCSC Farm have nurtured a different approach to
horticulture and agriculture–an approach that emphasizes exacting soil
and plant care, resource conservation, working with and respecting nature,
and finding the ecological basis for sustainable food production. This was
the first UC effort to focus on sustainable agriculture, commercial organic
production methods, and the social issues associated with developing a
sustainable food system. Under the auspices of the Center for Agroecology &
Sustainable Food Systems (formerly the Agroecology Program), the Farm &
Garden continue to combine tradition and vision as students, staff and
faculty search for environmentally and socially sound methods to produce
and distribute crops.

This article presents a brief history of the UCSC Garden & Farm projects
and the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems. Given the more
than thirty years which this history covers, it is by no means a definitive
effort, but is offered with the hope that readers –especially those
unfamiliar with the Farm & Garden–will gain some sense of the
contributions these projects have made. One could argue that "only in Santa
Cruz" could the Farm & Garden have taken root and thrived, in a time and
place that encouraged new ideas and innovative approaches to learning.
The Garden’s Root

UCSC’s garden was sown in an era of both political and physical turmoil.
As bulldozers reshaped the Cowell Ranch’s meadows and forests for campus
building sites, students sought "a sense of place" at the fledgling
University. In 1966, a conversation between visiting professor of history
Donald Nicholl and his office-trailer mate, philosophy professor Paul Lee,
sparked the idea of creating a garden to offset students’ feelings of
displacement and disruption. "It was a time of obvious destruction,"
recalls Chadwick contemporary Jim Nelson. "The Vietnam war was raging, the
world seemed preoccupied with artificiality and contrivance – students
were hungry for something new that would help foster change, love of the
earth, positive things." (1) Developing a garden was seen as a way to
bridge some of the gap between the natural and the artificial.

The idea found enthusiastic support from Chancellor Dean McHenry, who
smoothed the way for an agricultural effort on the new campus. In one of
those chance events that has now passed into legend, a Bavarian Countess
provided the link between UCSC and the gardener who would leave his
indelible mark. Countess Freya von Moltke* visited the campus in 1966 with
her friend Oegain Rosenstock-Huessey, a mentor of founding faculty member
Page Smith. The garden idea came up in conversation, and it was von Moltke
who made the connection to Alan Chadwick. She had met Chadwick in South
Africa, where he’d gone after World War Two to start a theater company
and to design a national display garden.

Chadwick was reluctant to take on the task. "Alan was in his fifties, a
failed Shakespearean actor – failed in the sense that he’d never met
with any great success on the stage – and suffered a great deal from his
back, which he injured during the war," recalled Smith in a 1992
interview.(3) "He was looking for a place to live out his life in relative
comfort. But Freya said to him, ‘Alan, you must make a garden here. This
is your mission.’"

Persuaded by von Moltke, Chadwick arrived in Santa Cruz in the winter of
1967. It was an exciting time at the UC system’s newest campus.
Competition for admission was fierce, as students sought to take part in an
academic setting that encouraged experimentation and creativity. Anthony
Mohr, a member of the campus’s ‘pioneer class,’ remembers that ". . .
we created our own traditions, rhythms, and boundaries. We barred
competition. There were no grades, no rank in class. . . No athletic teams
existed beyond informal groups. We governed by town meetings. . .
Fraternities were banned."(4) Against this backdrop, and accompanied by
Chancellor McHenry and a group of students, Chadwick toured the new campus
in search of a garden site.

His choice for the enterprise crossed the line that distinguished the
simply challenging from the truly daring: given the pick of the Cowell
Ranch’s gently sloping, grass- and flower-covered meadows, Chadwick
instead staked out four acres on a steep, rocky, chaparral-covered hill
between Stevenson and Merrill colleges. "At that time, the hillside was the
heart of campus," says Orin Martin, who now manages the Chadwick Garden.
"Alan wanted to be in the center of things, and the Garden was the first
thing people would see as they drove onto the upper section of the
university."
Growing the Garden

Chadwick set to work on the stony soil with a vengeance, using only the
Bulldog spade and fork that Smith & Hawken would one day make popular.
Author Robert Howard writes, "For the next two years, without taking a day
off, this 58-year-old man worked from dawn to dusk every day of the week.
Those who were there say he worked more heroically than they had ever seen
anyone work before." (5) Drawn to the emerging garden and the tall, lean
Englishman, students pitched in to clear coyote brush and poison oak, and
amend the paper-thin topsoil with tons of horse manure and other organic
materials. Under Chadwick’s often-demanding direction, volunteers hauled
limestone from the campus quarry to build paths and retaining walls, and
loosened the rock-hard soil with pickaxes before setting to work digging
permanent garden beds. "Those who fell under his spell had generally to put
up with a good deal. That so many were willing to do so is the best
possible testimony to the power of what he had to teach which was
inseparable from the way he taught it and person he was," wrote Page Smith
(6).

By 1969 the brushy hillside had been transformed. "From thin soil and
poison oak had sprung an almost magical garden that ranged from hollyhocks
and artemisias to exquisite vegetables and nectarines," says Robert Howard
(7). Chadwick had designed the site as a set of distinct "rooms" reached
from a winding central path, with marbled limestone walls buttressing
sloping garden beds designed to take full advantage of the sun’s course.
"Life appeared on that slope–the hummingbirds, the butterflies, and the
birds were always there," says Paul Lee. Wave after wave of tulips,
chrysanthemums, tithonia, cornflowers, zinnias, anemones, coreopsis,
scabiosa, and other blossoms brightened the Garden year-round. "It was a
heady period," wrote long-time Garden supporter Louise Cain. "A kiosk
supplied daily bunches of cut flowers to anyone passing by. Never have
University offices and home dining tables in Santa Cruz been so
blessed."(8)

Chadwick introduced a unique approach to gardening, which he called the
‘biodynamic/French intensive’ method. Biodynamics was a movement
initiated by Chadwick’s former tutor, Austrian philosopher Rudolf
Steiner, which according to Chadwick,

    "...refers to total truth – the utmost connection of spirit, mind and
body, with horticulture as just one of its facets."(9) "French intensive"
reflects the practice of 19th century French market gardeners, who planted
their carefully amended and cultivated beds using an ‘intensive’
spacing, so that plants touched each other when mature. According to
current Garden manager Orin Martin, the biodynamic/French intensive method
". . . synthesized traditional horticulture practices and observations from
the Greek, Chinese and Roman cultures on through 19th century French market
gardeners – folk techniques with modern scientific validity."(10)

Students were taught how to "double dig" beds, using a spade and fork to
loosen the soil to a depth of two spade blades. Chadwick noted that this
approach to gardening was nothing new. In a 1974 interview, he explained,

    "What we call the French intensive method was something picked up by
the ancient Greeks. They discovered that all plant life grew better on
landslides than on the bountiful, fertile soils of the alluvial plains,
where indeed plants grew well, but on landslides they found they grew
infinitely better." (11)

The double digging process mimics the effect of landslides, creating
aerated, well-drained soil conditions. The Garden’s carefully tended
beds, enriched with compost, bone meal, leaf mold, and other amendments
could produce up to four times the abundance of traditionally managed plots
from the same space.

Chadwick didn’t just strive for quantity. His upper class upbringing in
Edwardian English society had left him with exacting tastes and an
appreciation for fine food that he passed on to his young charges. In an
era when all supermarket lettuce was iceberg, all potatoes Russet and apple
choices were either red or green, the Garden boasted heirloom varieties of
vegetables, fruit and flowers. This was more than two decades before
"California cuisine" would make radicchio, purple beans, and fingerling
potatoes standard fare on restaurant menus. "It’s not much of a stretch
to say that Chadwick and those who trained with him were responsible for
the interest in distinctive fruit and vegetable varieties that we see
today," says Martin.

Rejecting anything synthetic, Chadwick also helped spur the organic
gardening and farming movements, with their craftsman-like approach to soil
building and plant care. He used organic inputs to enrich the rocky soil
and deplored the use of chemical pesticides. He preached composting –
"Life unto death and death unto life" – and emphasized the soil’s
fragility, warning that, "The skin of the Earth must be approached with
great sensitivity ... it is fragile and must be protected."

The techniques worked wonders on the inhospitable hillside. In a 1969
article(12), Sunset Magazine called Chadwick ". . . one of the most
successful organic gardeners the editors have ever met. Mr. Chadwick
believes that a healthy plant is not likely to be eaten or overcome by
pests and his intensive kind of culture is such that the plants do stay in
great health." Sunset’s editors marveled at the transformation of
marginal land into an abundant garden, reporting that, "At times during the
peak of the flower season, the students cut and placed ten thousand blooms
a day at the help-yourself kiosk on the main campus road. And last year the
gardeners grew, picked and supplied the college cafeterias with 1 3/4 tons
of tomatoes."

Those who worked with him found Chadwick a short-fused amalgam of charm and
fury. In a 1980 memoriam, Page Smith wrote,

    "In an age of "collective leadership" Alan Chadwick was imperious as a
King. In a day of carefully modulated and self-conscious "interpersonal
relations," he stormed and raged not just at abstractions like laziness or
indifference or inattention, but at the poor frail flesh of those who were
the destined instruments of his terrible, unflinching will. And then
suddenly, the consummate actor for whom all the world was a stage, he would
be as sunny, as playful, as irresistible as the prince of a fairly tale."
(13)

Despite his mercurial personality, Chadwick found willing listeners. "He
was a renegade and a madman, which is probably why young people were so
drawn to him," recalls Wendy Johnson, a former Chadwick apprentice. With
1962’s Silent Spring as a backdrop and the first Earth Day on the
horizon, Chadwick’s emphasis on working with rather than overpowering
nature, struck a chord. Some student volunteers began to spend more time in
the Garden than in the classroom, forming the core of an apprentice group
that would eventually be the model for a more formal training program. Beth
Benjamin, a freshman in 1967, recalls,

    "Alan was simply the most fascinating human being on campus for me.
Soon nothing else seemed to come into focus but his garden. I was unhappy
and doing poorly in my classes, but in the garden I vibrated with the
colors and the smells and the stories Alan told us about the plants and his
travels and the new skills I was learning. By April I convinced my
counselor that I wanted a leave of absence, and I could finally devote my
full time to the world of plants. As an apprentice, I worked from dawn
until dark and was filled with his dreams and our common task of bringing
the garden into reality, breaking new ground and tending what we had
already planted. He had flaming temper tantrums, told tales, gave us dinner
parties, fed us from his own bread and ham and cheese, threw dirt clods at
us and laughed as he hid behind the compost piles. He taught us the joy of
work, the discipline to persevere in order to make a dream come true, even
when we were hot and tired, and the deliciousness of resting and drinking
tea after such monumental labors ... I think of Alan almost every day
still, 30 years later, and smile with the memories and with gratitude for
all he gave me." (14)

Expanding the Vision: The UCSC Farm

The Garden’s success spurred interest in an expanded undertaking. In the
spring of 1970, students approved the use of registration fees to help
develop a campus Farm, where Chadwick’s techniques could be tested on a
larger scale. Chancellor McHenry added support from his discretionary
funds, and in the spring of 1971 the campus planning committee designated
14 acres of rolling meadow near the campus’s west entrance for the new
venture (the Farm has since been expanded to 25 acres). Steve Kaffka, a
former student and "lieutenant" of Chadwick’s, was put in charge of the
enterprise. Disagreements with University officials over the Farm’s
design and management were in part responsible for Chadwick’s leaving
UCSC in 1973, when he moved on to start new gardens in Marin County (at the
Green Gulch Zen Center), Saratoga and Covelo, California, and New Market,
Virginia.

UCSC’s Farm attracted a fiercely dedicated group of volunteers – many
of them former students who had left school to devote full time effort to
Chadwick and the Garden, others who had been drawn to the project from
outside the University. These self-proclaimed "home farmers" moved onto the
Farm site, erected tipis, built a rough-hewn "cookhouse," and began to
plant windbreaks and fruit trees, lay irrigation pipe, and put in
hand-worked vegetable beds.

Following Chadwick’s lead, the home farmers rejected the idea of using
mechanical implements to develop the Farm. They tried plowing with draft
horses, and directed by Brian Barhaugh, built a large barn using hand-hewn
lumber and Amish-style joinery techniques that relied on wooden pegs rather
than nails (the barn is still used for equipment storage). After a year,
most of the home farmers moved to Arkansas to homestead their own land.

Under Kaffka’s direction, the Farm found a ready audience amongst UCSC
students interested in pursuing projects ranging from alternative energy to
soil ecology. Still a relatively young, experimental campus, UCSC was open
to non-traditional courses, student-developed classes, and independent
studies. A group of students championed the idea of a Farm Center that
would serve as a dining hall and teaching facility. Campus architect and
lecturer Chuck Kahrs led a special class to work on the plans. Greg Smith,
a young designer and builder, gave months of his labor both to the task of
building and to teaching student volunteers who worked two summers with
hammer and nails. The result was a beautiful, airy redwood building
dedicated in 1976, which continues to serve as a focus of on-Farm life.

The energy crisis sparked other student projects. Physics professor Peter
Scott offered a course in "Practical Physics," using the Farm as a
demonstration site. Students built wind generators, solar-operated food
dryers, composting toilets, and a solar shower (since refurbished and still
in use). Others enrolled in classes taught by Kaffka to learn the basics of
organic soil management and food production.

Although student and volunteer energy and a small, paid staff helped
maintain the Farm and Garden and push through projects such as the Farm
Center, the sites needed a year-round, on-site work force if they were to
develop and thrive. At the same time, students were interested in getting a
more in-depth, hands-on experience than was available through a regular
ten-week class. In 1975, thanks to the efforts of Louise Cain (wife of
Environmental Studies professor Stanley Cain), a year-long Apprenticeship
in Ecological Horticulture was developed and offered through UCSC’s
Extension program for students seeking intensive training in organic
gardening and farming techniques (see be).

The Apprenticeship provided a more formal educational opportunity and
helped address the need for a committed group of on-site workers, but
Chancellor McHenry’s retirement forced Farm and Garden supporters to face
the challenge of finding continued funding and an administrative "home" for
the projects within the University. Fortunately, several distinguished
Environmental Studies professors, including Stanley Cain and Kenneth
Norris, stepped forward to champion the Garden and Farm. In May of 1976 the
faculty of College 8 (which included most of the Environmental Studies
faculty) voted unanimously to undertake academic sponsorship of the effort
as an adjunct to the college.

The facilities became part of an expanded Natural History curriculum.
Norris wrote,

    "Natural history is the study of the natural world from a holistic
viewpoint, the learning of her rules and processes. At the Farm and Garden,
the care of the soil, the concern that natural systems be understood and
guarded, and the oneness of people with the earth that supports them form
the philosophical basis for their functioning. This is ‘applied natural
history’ in its finest sense. Our academic scope for natural history at
Santa Cruz is thus immeasurably broadened by our new association with the
Farm and Garden program." (15)

Student interest in the Farm and Garden grew as the new academic focus
brought more opportunities at the sites. In 1978, Environmental Studies
professor Ray Dasmann reported,

    "The UCSC Farm and Garden have become an increasingly important field
laboratory for the academic program in Environmental Studies during the
past year.

    Starting in the winter quarter, 1978, the first course in
Ecodevelopment (ES 175) was based at the Farm Center as the most suitable
facility for a course concerned with the application of appropriate
technology and ecological principles to the problems of ecodevelopment. Not
only does the Farm demonstrate the success of labor intensive, small scale
food production, but it has also provided the locale for most of the
appropriate technology applications that have been carried out at UCSC.

    Also in the winter quarter, a student-directed course on The Natural
History of the Farm and Garden (College 8 42F) attracted far more students
than could be accepted and provided for the 23 who completed the course, an
opportunity to become familiar with the natural systems and agro-ecosystem
of the area.

    In the spring the Farm and Garden provided a field facility for the
student-directed course in Alternative Energy and Appropriate Technology
(ES 42C, 192C). This succeeded, among many other accomplishments, in
providing solar-heated hot water to the Farm Center, along with a
composting toilet. Professor Norris’s course in the Natural History of
California (College 8 100B) is based at the Farm when not in the field, and
[Stanley] Cain’s spring course in Vascular Plants (ES 168) uses both the
Farm and Garden regularly for practice in plant identification and
structure. This Fall the Farm is again being used by two of the field
sections of Dasmann’s Environmental Ecology course (ES 24).

    Perhaps more important than the formal courses are the independent
studies based at the Farm and Garden, for which academic credit is given.
These involve everything from construction of a solar greenhouse to the
natural history of the pocket gopher to a thesis on the Evolution of the
English Garden.
    The contributions of the Farm to teaching are likely to increase as the
research now under way begins to produce results." (16)

In addition to burgeoning student interest, off-campus support for the Farm
and Garden developed, thanks in part to the efforts of Louise Cain and
other Friends of the UCSC Farm & Garden. Founded in 1971, the
community-based Friends group served as a link to the area’s many home
gardeners and others interested in an organic approach to farming and
gardening. In a letter to the Friends, College 8 Provost Bob Curry wrote,

    "Over half of California’s prime agricultural land is now in urban
areas, primarily in backyards. I see the current research efforts and
agricultural extension efforts in this State as being misdirected, and I
believe that the Farm and Garden can fill an enormous need as a laboratory
for learning to use our backyards wisely. Such an "appropriate agriculture
extension" role is clearly a part of the University’s responsibility to
the citizens of California. The Friends of the Farm and Garden are an
important part of this outreach effort." (17)

The Friends’ lecture series and open houses at the Farm and Garden drew
enthusiastic crowds. To raise funds for the facilities, Friends made and
sold herb vinegars, put on auctions, wrote and produced the News & Notes of
the UCSC Farm and Garden Project, and encouraged the UCSC administration to
continue support of the projects. The Friends built a Gatehouse at the Farm
to serve as a meeting space and visitors center, bought a deer fence to
protect the Garden Project, and hosted plant sales, apple tastings, picnics
and teas that raised community awareness of the projects’ work.

Thanks in part to the Friends’ efforts, the Farm and Garden persevered
through funding shortages in the late 1970s. Declining enrollment and tax
cuts shrank the pool of student fees and discretionary funds which had long
supported the projects, so that campus fiscal support declined even as use
of the sites grew. In 1978, Garden manager Orin Martin and Farm manager Jim
Nelson maintained the Farm and Garden almost single-handedly, "for the
princely sum of $600 a month," recalls Martin.

Fortunately, by 1979 the apprenticeship program was firmly established,
bringing renewed energy in the form of a dedicated "learn-by-doing" work
force. At the Garden, staff and apprentices supplemented Chadwick’s
original efforts with new plantings of roses, citrus and apple trees,
perennial borders, and California natives. The Farm grew to include
tractor-cultivated row crops and orchards, as well as hand-worked garden
beds, generating enough produce to support a small direct marketing and
wholesale effort. Years before farmers markets were to become fixtures
throughout the country, a "market cart" pulled by the Farm’s donkey to
the base of campus offered fresh organically grown vegetables, fruit and
flowers for sale to campus and community members.

Interest in the Farm & Garden spread as graduating students and apprentices
took the message of organic farming and gardening into a larger arena.
Articles in Life magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York
Times, and the Washington Post generated national and international
attention. Drawn by news of the successful, small-scale food-producing
effort, visitors from around the world toured the projects. In 1978, News &
Notes editor Louise Cain reported,

    "Among recent visitors to the Farm were six African agricultural
educators fostering small-scale agriculture to discourage the too rapid
migration from tribal areas to the cities. Another day a tribal chief and
traditional mayor from the island of Yap in the Caroline Islands arrived.
They were interested in our vegetable gardening especially, since they saw
comparable settings and situations to those in Yap." (18)

The Farm & Garden Today: The Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food
Systems

The Farm and Garden presaged what would become the current movement in
organic farming and sustainable agriculture. By 1980, concerns over
conventional agriculture’s impacts on soil and groundwater, the
development of pesticide-resistant "super pests," and a growing interest in
organic farming made the Farm and Garden’s activities relevant to a
broader audience. In response, UCSC’s Environmental Studies Board
proposed a new program in agroecology, the application of ecological
principles to agricultural settings, with the Farm and Garden as the
program’s on-campus headquarters.

Led by professor of agroecology Stephen Gliessman, who joined the
Environmental Studies faculty in 1981, the new Agroecology Program
attracted enormous interest and substantial funding from sources such as
California’s Environmental License Plate Fund, the Columbia Foundation,
and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund. Said Gliessman of the new effort,

    "The underlying principle of our work is to understand better the
ecological processes of natural ecosystems and apply our findings to what
are largely manipulative agricultural systems. There is a tremendous need
and opportunity to develop and promote agricultural practices that are
environmentally sensible, economically feasible, and socially responsible."
(19)

The Agroecology Program was the first UC project to focus on what would
come to be known as "sustainable" agriculture systems, and to pursue
research on organic production techniques. In 1983, Alfred E. Heller funded
UCSC’s first endowed chair, creating a chair in agroecology which
Gliessman continues to hold. In 1984, thanks in part to the efforts of
grant writer Kay Thornley, the Agroecology Program received ongoing state
funding.

In 1993, following the recommendation of an external review committee, the
Agroecology Program’s name was changed to the Center for Agroecology &
Sustainable Food Systems to reflect the Center’s dual interests in both
environmental and social aspects of sustainable agriculture.

Today the Center, directed by agroecologist Dr. Carol Shennan, conducts a
multi-faceted research, education, and community outreach effort. Research
staff and faculty work with farmers in the region to develop more
sustainable growing techniques. Center members interested in
agriculture’s social aspects have encouraged the agriculture community to
consider such issues as food security, gender equity, and workers’ rights
as part of a sustainable food and agriculture system. A new graduate
program in Environmental Studies includes a focus on agroecology and
sustainable agriculture. The Center’s international work brings
researchers, extension agents, and graduate students from around the world
to learn about agroecology and sustainable farming.

The Farm and the Alan Chadwick Garden continue to attract four to five
thousand visitors a year to see examples of organic soil management,
alternative pest control measures, water conservation, and biodiversity on
both home garden and commercial scales. Faculty and students use the sites
for classes and research efforts, while Center staff and apprentices
maintain and develop the projects as flourishing demonstrations of what can
be accomplished "working with, rather than overpowering nature." Thanks to
the efforts of those that followed him, Chadwick’s vision has evolved and
found fertile ground at UC Santa Cruz.

The Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture

"[Chadwick’s] manner of teaching was the simple, classical one of
combining practicality and vision. He would first demonstrate how to do
something, and then put the student to work doing the same thing," writes
author and former apprentice Robert Howard.

The "apprenticeship" teaching style became the model for the current
Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture. Offered through the Center for
Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems and UCSC Extension, this full-time,
six-month program serves an international group of 35 to 40 participants
with a broad range of backgrounds and interests. The course provides
intensive training in the basic techniques participants need to start their
own organic farms or market gardens, run school and community garden
projects, work in horticultural therapy, or teach in overseas development
programs. Credit is available through UCSC Extension. Each year, five
undergraduate students in the Environmental Studies Department take part in
the Apprenticeship to complement their regular coursework.

The Apprenticeship blends hands-on learning with a more traditional
scholastic approach of lectures and small-group discussions. Students spend
approximately 200 hours in the classroom, in small group classes in the
field, and on field trips designed to broaden their exposure to different
aspects of sustainable agriculture. Topics range from soil science, botany,
and entomology to more specifics courses including compost production,
irrigation, weed and pest management, tree crops, apiculture, farm
equipment, seed saving, crop planning, and marketing strategies. Other
classes cover such areas as community land trusts, rural development, and
social issues in sustainable agriculture.

Apprentices apply their theoretical knowledge during more than 700 hours of
hands-on work. As they manage the cropping cycle from seed planting to
harvest, apprentices learn the nuts and bolts of gardening and farming.
They build compost piles, prepare garden beds, evaluate soil fertility, set
up irrigation systems, make sowing mixes, plant out and cultivate crops.
They also learn how to recognize and manage disease and pest problems, make
a cropping plan, choose appropriate equipment, care for fruit trees, and
much more.

Since the Garden’s founding, more than 800 apprentices have learned to
cultivate plants in harmony with nature, without the need for chemical
fertilizers and pesticides. This international group has spread
small-scale, intensive organic techniques to countries around the world, in
settings that range from South African townships to villages in rural Nepal
to inner city gardens in the U.S. Apprenticeship graduates have started
their own farms and market gardens, and work in urban agriculture, nursery
production, horticultural therapy, garden-based education, overseas
development projects, and community food security efforts. Apprentice
course graduate Franz Muhl, now working in his native South Africa, says
that, "The Apprenticeship has inspired many individuals to go out and start
projects that nurture our planet and its inhabitants."


Notes
1Ann Lindsey, News & Notes of the UCSC Farm & Garden, Issue 76, Winter
1997.
2Carolyn Reynolds Ortiz, from an interview with Page Smith. News & Notes of
the UCSC Farm & Garden, Issue 67, Fall 1995, p 10.
3UCSC Farm & Garden: 25 Years and Beyond. Video produced and written by
Carolyn Reynolds-Ortiz, 1992.
4 "UCSC’s first years: an alumnus remembers," an interview with Anthony
J. Mohr, in Currents Online, University of California, Santa Cruz. July 19,
1999. http://www.ucsc.edu/oncampus/currents/99-00/07-19/essay.htm.
5 Robert Howard, What Makes the Crops Rejoice: An Introduction to
Gardening. 1986. Boston: Little, Brown.
6Page Smith, News & Notes of the UCSC Farm & Garden Project, Issue 16, July
1980, p1.
7 Robert Howard, What Makes the Crops Rejoice: An Introduction to
Gardening. 1986. Boston: Little, Brown.
8Louise Cain, News & Notes of the UCSC Farm & Garden Project, Issue 17,
September 1980
9Garden Song: Alan Chadwick’s Vision of Abundance. Video produced by Jim
Mulligan and John de Graaf. Arthur Mokins Productions, Inc.
10Orin Martin, Santa Cruz Express, April 25, 1985.
11Garden Song: Alan Chadwick’s Vision of Abundance. Video produced by Jim
Mulligan and John de Graaf. Arthur Mokins Productions, Inc.
12Sunset Magazine, March 1969.
13Page Smith, News & Notes of the UCSC Farm & Garden Project, Issue 16,
July 1980, p1.
14 Beth Benjamin, News & Notes of the UCSC Farm & Garden, Issue 75, Summer
1997
15Ken Norris, letter to the Environmental Studies board (undated).
16Ray Dasmann, News & Notes of the UCSC Farm & Garden Projects, Issue 6,
November 1978, edited by Louise Cain
17Bob Curry, News & Notes of the UCSC Farm & Garden Projects, Issue 12,
November 1979
18Louise Cain, News & Notes of the UCSC Farm & Garden Project, Issue 1, Jan
1978
19Tom O’Leary, UCSC Review, Volume 8, Number 1, October 1982