Loretta Allison,
Spade and Seeds, and Christina Wenger,
A Thinking Stomach, have set out to find gardeners who can teach us how to live better in our outdoor spaces. Home gardeners who have designed their own spaces—large or small—in ways that feed their homes and their spirits draw us to them. We figure we’re hungry to learn from them, so you might be also. Join us in our occasional series as we explore their spaces.
Text by Christina Wenger
Photography by
Paul Delmont
Art direction by Loretta Allison
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Raised beds hold garlic, onions, burdock, tree collards, carrots, and strawberries. |
In February, as I step out of Janice Kubo’s back door, I encounter a
series of raised beds where once had been a concrete-paved driveway
turn-around. A quick scan of the garden tells me this place is beautiful, and
it’s full of food. Right now, midwinter, these beds near the sliding door are
lush with chard, lettuce, garlic, and bok choy, all in elegant rows.
Janice is showing me around her yard, and for a moment, her
mother steps out to join us. We haven’t made it far out the back door, because
I have lots of questions, but her mom stops near us and shows me how in the
evening she pulls weeds from the beds and lays them in a small pile for pill
bugs and slugs to hide in. In the morning, she takes the weeds, pests and all,
and tosses them, away from where they can cause any more damage to the garden.
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Janice and Tim Kubo and Janice's mother, Yoshie Mitsuhashi, in front
of their kumquat and orange trees. |
This garden is a team effort, directed by Janice and her
mother, supported by the labor of Tim, Janice’s husband, and driven and
inspired by the need for healthy, organic food to help counteract the many food
allergies Tim and Janice’s son experiences. Though the focus of the garden is
food and herbal medicines, the garden is beautiful and clearly influenced by
the family’s Japanese heritage. Janice tells me she’s proud of how her family
has rallied together to build this garden, and that each of them “gets it,” how
they’re working together for each other and the planet. She tells me “growing
food is a joy” and “it’s fun to harvest what you grow, put it on a table, and
eat it.” More than she expected, she’s happy to have inspired her friends and
neighbors to grow more of their own food.
One bed in this area is taller than the others, and when
Janice waves her arm around the garden as a whole, I can see a few others are
taller as well. These beds are raised higher than the others because the family
is experimenting with hugelkultur, a
permaculture strategy in which a bed covers a pile of wood and brush debris. As
the wood decomposes under the soil, it works as both fertilizer and a means of
water-retention in our dry climate.
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Edible Saxifraga stolonifera serves
as an attractive ground cover under
perennial tree collards. |
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A garden pathway passes
under a loquat to where a food-providing
pond will eventually be. |
As we move around the satsuma tree to another part of the
garden, Janice shows me more beds and fruit trees. One
hugelkultur bed is full of fava beans tumbling over its edges. In
full bloom, the black and white fava blossoms smell sweet and buzz with bees.
Another bed has a multistory crop of tree collards with red-veined,
crystalline-haired, strawberry geraniums (
Saxifraga
stolonifera)—commonly found as a houseplant, but in Japan used as a food
plant—embroidering the deep shade of the collards. Along the side edge is a bed
inhabited by a lone chayote vine, small now after winter die-back, but waiting
impatiently to twist and pull itself up its trellis, covering the whole garden
wall during the growing season. Two-gallon pots form the edge of this bed; each
pot holds strawberry plants that will fruit in the spring. In this back corner
is an old, unknown-variety fig tree that predates the family’s tenure here.
With branches weeping like a trained bonsai, the tree naturally dwarfed tree
produces loads of large, black fruit at the end of short-noded branches each
year. Also along the back wall are a kumquat, a lemon, and a navel orange.
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Ficoide glacial, aka Ice Lettuce, started from a
cutting Janice took at a restaurant. |
We’ve reached the graceful center of the garden, where a
pond used to be, now filled in with a bed of garlic and lettuce. The spot is
still, and though no water reflects the large paper-lantern-like oranges
hanging above, it somehow maintains the peaceful sense that water features add
to gardens. Janice and her family are currently studying acquaculture, with the
plan to rebuild the pond here and stock it with carp or bluegill, edible fish
that succeed in our warm summers and cool winters. Around the edges of the
smallest puddle of lawn are large, low pots that hold perennial medicinal
plants, mint, mugwort, and
dokudami, all of which could be
invasive if planted in the ground. In pots, the plants are safe from taking
over the rest of the yard and provide visual interest. Branches naturally
mosaic-ed in brown, bone, and bronze, a white guava tree grows behind us.
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Janice grafted a scion from my Golden Russet apple
to a tree in her front yard; the scion has "taken" and
is leafing out healthily. |
Janice
and her family keep this food garden lush with lots of work—when Janice isn’t
at her job, she spends at least six hours a day in the garden—and with
composted waste materials from their kitchen and garden. Though the back yard
is the most productive and most beautiful part of the garden, the family is
working to convert the front yard too, where more fruit trees (an avocado, a
persimmon, an apple, and a couple peaches), a few fruiting bushes and vines,
and perennial vegetable and herb crops grow in several beds that frame the lawn
that is left.
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Readily reseeding red orach grows in the
front yard, providing the salad bowl and
the neighbors a pop of color. |
The
lot is a fifth of an acre, houses a 1,900 square feet house, and grows so much
food already, with the potential for much more. Janice tells me she hopes one
day the whole lot is food-producing: “food everywhere, with just stepping
stones or small paths to move around on.” The Kubo family is already well on
the way towards this goal. And if beauty is food for the soul, they’re creating
plenty of that, too.
Takeaways From The Kubo’s Garden:
- Chayote is a trouble-free, vining perennial crop that matures in the autumn and can be used similarly to zucchini, or, as Janice does, in a tasty, tasty chayote kimchi.
- If you want to start with an easy-to-grow crop that requires little effort on the part of a beginning gardener, grow green onions.
- Fava beans—a perfect crop for our mild Southern California winters—once dried, can be soaked, their skins removed, and cooked and sweetened to make a paste similar to red bean paste for use in mochi.
- Don’t avoid growing quickly spreading perennial plants that may be hard to remove from your yard; instead, grow them in large, pretty pots that will contain them, but also add to the garden’s beauty.
- Some fruit trees are architecturally and texturally interesting, and can serve as focal points in a food producing yard: a fig tree and a guava tree do this in the Kubo's yard.