Introduction to the Gardens of Love

As a biodynamic fruit grower and trained farmer, I have experienced first-hand how challenging it is to grow healthy crops with natural methods. There is a lot I can say about what challenges we face and you can read more on the Gardens of Love website (www.thegardensoflove.com) and in the book Growing Gardens of Love (available from the website and from Amazon).

What it comes down to is that our ways of growing plants is very intense work, with little time for rest, and the work becomes more monotonous, the more efficient and large scale we try to become. And while we strive for efficiency, we can see the plants and animals, as well as the farmers suffer: stress and disease creep in, so that we have to constantly battle the consequences of our farming systems.

I have a dream, a vision of agriculture renewed.

For years I have searched and theorised for a new way of growing food, where there is time and space to do things right: Time to care for the soil, the plants, the animals and the people around us with loving attention, time to enjoy the beauty of our surroundings and the joys of our work. And space for beauty, for wildlife, for meeting with others. A search for ways to create an agriculture that is not constant hard work, but a lovely, fulfilling labour of love, that leaves us feeling energised and connected to the world around us.

The model I have come up with unites permaculture, biodynamic farming and the ideal of ‘kin-domains’, into what I hope will become a new way of living together and caring for the land, nature and each other while producing our food:

The plan is to raise funds to buy a farm with a group of people. We will turn this farm into our beautiful community of Gardens and Gardians (the Gardians are the people caring for a parcel of land on the farm).

Each Gardian - with their families, if they wish - will take care of about a hectare (100m x 100m or about 2.5 acres) of land, planting trees, shrubs and - mainly perennial - plants and caring for some small animals, as well as for a pond with fish.

The idea is to grow a wide variety of foods, while also creating spaces for wildlife and beauty. At the same time, it is important to design our Gardens so that it is quite easy to care for them, without having to put in a lot of hard work once the Gardens are established.

One of the key ideas of the Gardens of Love is that we take the time to really get to know the trees and plants and animals in the Garden, and care for them with loving attention and respect.

We will work with local councils and communities to make it possible to build homes in the Gardens for us to live in, as well as building a community centre, the Heart centre: a central meeting place, with a cafe, a theatre, and shop, and space for workshops for things like metal work, woodwork, pottery, for doing courses and processing our harvest in to jams and pies to name just a few of the possibilities. This will be a place where we can work together or on our own projects, in an atmosphere of exchange.

We can create beautiful shared ponds and lakes, a tea-garden by the Heart centre, and space for guests to stay and share the joys of our Gardens. The majority of the land on the farm can be divided into Garden plots, but there will also be areas for grazing animals and some crop land.

In our community we will create places where we can all wake up to who we really are and what we each came to do here on Earth and to start living from who we truly are, by creating opportunities for us to go and do the things we love.

The possibilities of how exactly we will do this are endless, and depend on a large part on the Gardians of the Gardens of Love, on our shared talents, on our dreams and our passions.

Right now, we are looking for people to help make this amazing vision come to life. To brainstorm together on how we can make this happen and to get stuck in and build this dream into life.

For more information and to join the project, please comment below; visit the website www.thegardensoflove.com, find us on facebook @ the Gardens of Love project or buy the book Growing Gardens of Love!