Food Not Lawns

In her great book called “Food, Not Lawns”, Heather Flores explains how lawns were originally a status symbol of wealth by people who could afford to have grass just for the look of it, at a time when all the poor peasants had to labour in their fields. 

Recently I saw a clip of a family from Pasadena, USA, who are totally self sufficient in their small section.   Lynda Hallinan, editor of the NZ Gardener magazine and author of the brilliant “Homegrown” special editions, reduced her grocery bill to $10 a week by growing all her vegetables on a quarter acre section.  That, I thought, was pretty cool.  The Dervaes family in Pasadena have just raised the bar. 

With a family of four adults they are more than self sufficient on a fifth of an acre.  Their total garden area is just one tenth of an acre.  In that space they grow or raise all of the food they need, plus they have a bounty of surplus available to sell that brings them in US $40k a year.

Their website is www.dervaesgardens.com and it is both inspiring and beautiful.  They are famous for supplying local restaurants with edible flowers for salads and garnishes.  On their tiny section are chickens and ducks for eggs, bees for honey and pollination, and the most gorgeous tiny goats for milk.  Rabbits turn leafy greens into rich manure.  The whole family is vegetarian, and all of the animals have names (though possibly not the bees).

When I say they are inspiring, I mean in a way that made me immediately tear up the lawn for eight new garden beds.  I have poured through their website, admiring the photos and reading the blog entries, enjoying the stories of life on the homestead.

There is something satisfying to the soul to see their shelves stocked full of preserves that also raises a touch of envy in me.  I have lots of my preserves packed in boxes stored in the garage - and not brilliantly labeled either, so I sometimes have the frustrating situation of not being able to find what I’m looking for, and also the flip side of stumbling across a treasure trove of wild blackberry jam when I had thought it was all gone.

They invoke in me a sense that I could do that.  Maybe we don’t have enough posh up-market restaurants serving expensive salads on beds of violets for me to earn a living, but I can grow and preserve a lot more for my family. 

When you’re out this summer pushing your noisy, smelly lawn-mower around, why not change direction and mow a few pathways around some future garden beds instead, leaving the grass to grow?  The tall grass can be cut down in autumn to create mulch and your gardens will be ready for planting in spring with minimal effort.