APPRENTICE PROGRAM

We have openings for 2 -3 more apprentices for the 1999 season. Unparalleled educational opportunity. 30 hrs/week labor. Simple lifestyle, communal living. No money. Details at website, or call to arrange a visit.

Also willing to make part time arrangements with persons living elsewhere - one day (or more)/week. Trade labor for learning: learn by doing.

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So, to remember our changing garden,

We are linked as children in a circle dancing:

My dear one is mine as mirrors are lonely,

And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

W. H. Auden, Miranda’s Song

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WINTER ANNUALS,

SPRING EPHEMERALS

These are two categories of plants that you might not have thought much about, but now (April) is a good time to do so.

The winter annuals (species which germinate in the autumn, grow all winter, flower in spring, set seed and ‘die’) are now flowering, and so are the spring ephemerals, which have only been out of the ground for a few weeks, it seems, and in a few more weeks will pack it in until next spring.

Winter annuals are obviously welcome in the garden for their ability to cover otherwise bare soil and capture otherwise wasted sunlight. How much more complete, then, should be our joy if they also turn out to be edible, medicinal, ornamental and/or the source of the best good time this god-forsaken planet affords? (just kidding, planet)

Creasy greens are now turning land that was cultivated last year bright yellow. There are two kinds, Barbarea verna & B. vugaris. The former (preferable) species is offered in seed catalogs as ‘upland cress’ (creasy = cress = cross = crucifer - the mustard family = four petals, frequently at right angles). The basal rosette of leaves is the part eaten, in early spring, before flowering. B. verna leaves have more small lobes (8-12 pairs) before the large terminal lobe - identify it now and in June gather ripe seed stalks to wave over your garden while asking for ‘free fresh greens, next March and April."

Other winter annuals include: Chickweed, edible, world-class useful plant, medicinal uses include relief of itching; Henbit, the plant that turns some gardens into a sheet of pink/purple about now - no, it’s not ‘taking over’ your garden, in fact in a few more weeks it will shrink to the size of a seed and disappear until you’re through gardening next fall, so just enjoy them as a transient natural phenomenon (aren’t they all?) plus, you can eat it; Shepherd’s purse, another crucifer, the leaf rosette is edible (but small), important herb to stop bleeding, internal & external, seeds have been used like pepper; poppies, Papaver somniferum, whose beautiful flowers are followed by the well-known edible seeds packaged in an elegant shaker/capsule., also therapeutic.

Winter annuals which can be naturalized in our area include Money plant, Miner’s lettuce and Cornsalad and Hey! no space left to tell you about the ephemerals: Spring beauty, Toothwort, Squirrel Corn, Bloodroot, dwarf Ginseng and the redoubtable Ramp. Bummer!

This year we are offering a series of full-day and half-day workshops on a variety of topics:

- Useful plant identification, culture & uses: We’ll tour the garden, and explore several habitats in the adjacent Nat’l Forest. You can see and learn about more useful plants on this half-day walk than anywhere else. $10

May 30, 1-5pm; June 19, 9-12 pm July 3, 9-12

-Grow your own medicine: All day workshop focusing on 100 herbs which you can easily grow/gather, and incorporate into your life: their propagation, culture, harvest, preparation and uses. Garden tour will introduce you to the plants, in the nursery you’ll get an introduction to propagation techniques, in the library we’ll discuss the most useful reference material, then we’ll harvest & tincture several herbs.$50 June12, July 17, 9-5

-Growing & using Chinese medicinal herbs Mtn Gdns grows several hundred Chinese herbs, and maintains a well-stocked Chinese pharmacy. Workshop will include a general introduction to Chinese herbalism, and detailed information based on my experiences growing the herbs (in many cases, there is no available information in English). Opportunity to buy rare plants and seeds. All day. $50 July 10, 9-5

-Paradise Gardening, theory & practice: This popular all-day workshop will provide a general introduction to all our projects (wild gardening, alternative energy & building techniques, herbal medicine, simple living, etc) and the rationale which connects them. Intended as an inspirational jump start for persons contemplating, or already embarked on, an alternative lifestyle more closely connected to the earth. $50 June 26, 9-5

-Chinese tonic herbalism: Half day event focusing on the tonic category of herbs, from both the Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Taoist (meditation, martial arts, longevity) perspectives. We’ll meet and discuss the herbs, both in the garden and herb shop, prepare a variety of classic formulas, and conclude with a tea party. $20 June 5, 1-5 pm

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All workshops will include useful handouts and free surplus seed distribution, survey of important relevant literature, and ample time for questions; also, opportunity to purchase seeds & plants, fresh & dried herbs and preparations (after the workshop).

All are limited to 12 people (minimum 5) - you may reserve a place by sending $10 deposit (refundable up to 1 week before event, or if it doesn’t happen), please include phone

From Asheville: North on 19/23, follow 19 through Burnsville about 5 miles to Hwy 80S (Micaville), go about 7 miles (towards Blue Ridge Parkway), just past Toe River Craftshop, turn right on White Oak Creek Rd. Keep right at first fork, left (actually, straight) at second, we are the last place on the right before the end of the road.

GARDEN GROWING WILD

Many gardens are formal and artificial. The flower beds are trimmed like table cloths or painted designs. The lawns are clipped like plastic fur. The paths are clean...The furniture is new...

These gardens have none of the quality which brings a garden to life - the quality of a wilderness, tamed, still wild, but cultivated enough to be in harmony with the buildings which surround it and the people who move in it...

In [the Garden Growing Wild] things are arranged so that the natural processes which come into being will maintain the condition of the garden and not degrade it. For example,, mosses and grasses will grow between paving stones...the garden is arranged so that this process enhances the garden and does not threaten it. In an unnatural garden, these kind of events have constantly to be "looked after" - the gardener must constantly try to control and eradicate the processes of seeding, weeds, the spread of roots, the growth of grass.

A garden growing wild is healthier, more capable of stable growth, than the more clipped and artificial garden...

And for the people too, the garden growing wild creates a more profound experience. The gardener is in the position of a good doctor, watching nature take its course, occasionally taking action, pruning, pulling out some species, only to give the garden more room to grow and become itself...gardens that have to be tended obsessively, enslave a person to them, you cannot learn from them in quite the same way....

Pattern #172, from Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, Oxford U. P., 1977

Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use,

Did after him the world seduce,

And from the fields the flowers and plants allure,

Where nature was most sweet and pure.

He first enclosed within the gardens square

A dead and standing pool of air,

And a more luscious earth for them did knead,

Which stupefied them as it fed.

The pink then grew as double as his mind;

The nutriment did change the kind.

With strange perfumes he did the roses taint,

And flowers themselves were taught to paint.

The tulip, white, did for complexion seek,

And learned to underline its cheek:

Its onion root they then so high did hold,

That one was for a meadow sold.

Another world was searched, thro’ oceans new,

To find the Marvel of Peru.

And yet these rarities might be allowed

To man, that sovereign thing and proud,

Had he not dealt between the bark and tree,

Forbidden mixtures there to see.

No plant now knew the stock from which it came;

He grafts the wild upon the tame:

That th’ uncertain and adulterate fruit

Might put the palate in dispute.

His green seraglio has its eunuchs too,

Lest any tyrant him outdo.

And in the cherry he does nature vex,

To procreate without a sex.

‘Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot,

While the sweet fields do lie forgot:

Where willing nature does to all dispense

A wild and fragrant innocence:

And fauns and fairies do the meadows till,

More by their presence than their skill.

Their statues, polished by some ancient hand,

May to adorn the garden stand:

But howsoe’er the figures do excel,

The gods themselves with us do dwell.

Andrew Marvell (1681)

[Mower: a person who cares for meadows, by mowing]