permaculture

[Niels Corfield <mudguard@gmail.com>]

Rain,

Can we get to see some of these pics?
I hope so.

All the best,
Niels Corfield

My Bookmarks:
http://del.icio.us/entrailer

My Pics and Projects:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nielscorfield/
http://picasaweb.google.com/mudguard

Groups I Contribute to:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/polyculturepeople/
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/leeds_permaculture_network/?yguid=243022692
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/scythe

Swillington Permaculture Forest Garden Project -Aerial Image (Now Quite Old):
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=LS26+8QA&ie=UTF8&z=19&ll=53.760874,-1.428051&spn=0.000943,0.00339&t=k&om=1



Rain Tenaqiya wrote:
> The Chadwick Garden is currently undergoing a revival, with abandoned areas 
> being restored to production and new designs.  It is the best mixed food 
> garden I've seen, with some areas approaching food forest status.  I've 
> attached a couple pictures from my book, West Coast Food Forestry (on disc), 
> if you'd like to see what some of these areas look like.  I believe that the 
> trees, shrubs, and other perennials planted in this garden (and others like 
> it) are one of the main factors for its continued existence, as they provide 
> a structure and continuity through all the changes and periods of neglect.
>    
>   Rain
>   
>
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>
> 1. Alan Chadwick?s garden is a ?garden of the mind?as much as it
> is of the soil. (Lawrence F. London, Jr.)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:17:58 -0500
> From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." 
> Subject: [permaculture] Alan Chadwick?s garden is a ?garden of the
> mind?as much as it is of the soil.
> To: permaculture 
>
> Message-ID: <45B0FD46.5070707@intrex.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
>
> 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
>
> === message truncated ===
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