How Gardening CONNECTS US to the WORLD BARE ESSENTIALS ･ JENKINS FARMER ･ THE INTREPID GARDENER
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While teaching at an agricultural college in Haiti (Centr de Formation Fritz Lafontant ) Jenks takes a lesson about plants from children of local farmers.
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enks Farmer caught the travel bug as a teen. But he’s balanced that with a life of building botanical gardens and a pioneering, organic crinum lily farm. But he still travels, recently teaching for an agricultural college in Haiti. His book Deep Rooted Wisdom, offers lessons for earth friendly gardening, told through stories of self-taught, older gardeners. Here’s his story of learning to balance the love of creating gardens with the drive of exploring the world.
BARE ESSENTIALS ･ JENKINS FARMER ･ THE INTREPID GARDENER
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Jenks organic crinum lily farm, encapsulates his sense of wanderlust and revere for deep-‐rooted wisdom.
Cows, pecan trees, okra fields, rusty tin roofs and plenty of racism just weren’t for this free spirited 19-year-old boy. So I ran hard to get away from that run-down family farm. In one giant, naïve leap that freaked the family out, I left South Carolina to enroll, as the only American exchange student at the University of Zambia. I landed in a different world, swooning. Everything was skewed but familiar and the combination fascinated me.
Skeletal trees, strange fruits, tin-roofed shacks and an upside down mix of races sparked a wanderlust, that would lead to decades of traveling and seeking; all centered around plants. Besides Zambian city markets and gardens, I wanted to see the wild plants of Africa. A baking, day long bus ride through desert scrub, led to the shady forest under Victoria Fall. The sun setting, the falls thundered and tiny explosions lit the place up. Day-Glo orange giant spherical flowers popped out of rock crevices and rugged tree trunks; the blood lilies I’d long to see. I emerged from this psychedelic scene on a bridge over the falls, where a handsome Australian hiker walked directly up to me and said, “You look like a seasoned traveler, a real nomad.” Me? I was totally flattered; I hoped he was trying to pick me up. Me? I suddenly understood; I wanted to be that nomad. I was just as suddenly, confused.
How can one be a nomad and cultivate plants which are things rooted in one place? My answer came with the realization that plants connect us. No matter where you go, people farm and grow things for all sorts of uses. All over the world, I’ve made connections by telling people that I’m a lily farmer or conversation by bringing up some obscure plant fact. “Yes, where I’m from we eat peanut butter and we also boil the nuts whole in salt water and eat them hot, soggy and salty!” More than growing food or fiber though, there is universal joy and fascination in nurturing plants; pleasure gardening. Through the years, living here and there, I traded my gardening skills for places to crash. And satisfied my plant-driven needs by visiting public gardens. Roaming Hamburg once, I spent an entire afternoon with an older gentleman. He spoke no English. I spoke no German. We smiled, pointed, tasted and Latin-talked our way through endless gardens of the Planten um Blomen. I did settle down later, for a career building botanical gardens, a job seemingly based in one place. But my gardening became a quest; plant-collecting trips, international seed trades, field trips to visit plants in the wild. The gardens I made reflected styles and plants, and practices inspired by travels. But they, like I, am rooted in South Carolina and celebrate local plants, customs, climates and stories.
BARE ESSENTIALS ･ JENKINS FARMER ･ THE INTREPID GARDENER
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The planning of a garden has been my artful endeavor, my way to channel creativity.
My gardens became a way to connect with others who travel through. Now other nomads come through to see how plants act in this climate, the stories of the land and farms, histories of craftsmen told through something familiar but skewed; stories of our universal love of plants. The planning of a garden has been my artful endeavor, my way to channel creativity. I’m aligned with artist and craftsmen as we seek to connect people through an experience. Unlike most artists though garden makers’ pallet and vision must be a bit blurry. Plants follow their genetic predilections. Rain, wind, unexpected insects and unseen vibrations change them too. Variation in climate, differences in aesthetics, even contradictions in how we eat a given plant changes the story. Today I’m settled back on that same little farm I ran so hard to escape. But I’ve turned it upside down, making it an organic farm that specializes in an African lily. I get to share lessons of earth, science and history with visitors. Most rewarding though is that those plants connect me to interns, students and farm youth. Sometimes I see these young people make big leaps, naïve leaps and they connect me to parts of the world I may never set foot in. These find themselves in situations just like where I found myself, on a bridge over a mystical river, contemplating the desire to explore and the need for rootedness.
On humid summer nights we walk around this farm without even a flashlight. My feet have memory; they know how to avoid the ankle-twisting armadillo holes. But seeking, we often take a black light along and wonder in the glowing lily fields at zebra moths (they turn purple) and centipedes (they turn a surprising day-glow orange.) Sometimes we don’t talk. Sometimes, we dream of a fantasy garden full of glow-in the-dark plants, sparkling bugs and singing chartreuse frogs. Realistically, I’ll probably never get around to planting that garden. It will be more rewarding if, one night, one of these nomads who wandered by my farm calls me up, invites me to see his glowing garden. We’ll, marvel in the dark, at plants and imagination, dirt and dreams. And I’ll recall that that moon lit walk at Victoria Falls, a forest studded with Day-Glo orange blood lilies and memories of some guy from Adelaide who helped me set a course of wandering and being rooted.
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Deep-‐Rooted Wisdom is Farmer's antidote to this corporate-‐driven model of gardening. In it he shares the traditional skills and techniques he has learned over the years from generations of gardeners, like gardening with pass-‐along plants, harnessing the natural power of worms and mushrooms, saving heirloom seeds, and making handmade garden structures out of available materials. Along the way, he introduces us to a cast of unforgettable characters, like Yvrose Valdez, a woman from Haiti who uses legumes in lieu of fertilizer, and Bennet Baxley, who has a 20-‐acre yard filled almost entirely with scavenged plants. Deep-‐Rooted Wisdom by Augustus Jenkins Farmer (Timber Press, 2015) ISBN: 9781604694529 Available from Timber Press online and all good book stores. www.timberpress.com Augustus Jenks Farmer's vision for reflective, soulful gardening guided gardeners, craftsmen, volunteers, and scientists to create two lauded public botanical gardens as well as art museums, city parks, and private enclaves. His connoisseurs' nursery promoted the renaissance of the crinum lily, a forgotten, beloved plant of early American gardens. Today, he ships organically grown crinum lilies all over the country.
BARE ESSENTIALS ･ JENKINS FARMER ･ THE INTREPID GARDENER
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