I am Chantal.
I am a retired physician.
I am a moon gardener.
The Moon Gardener
Lunar gardening is something that
has been going on for centuries.
Farmers have developed it,
but it has become more of a "science".
(Rob Greenfield Films)
I started planting according to the lunar cycles.
I have found that by putting it into practice,
things grow much faster than they would otherwise.
I think it has got to do with putting yourself
in sync with the rhythms of the seasons,
the rhythms of the earth,
and the rhythms of planting.
I think that when you put yourself
in sync with the seasons,
when you are in touch with nature,
you feel different.
You are more grounded.
It is a different feeling.
I think that that is what permeates this garden.
As a result of the fact that this garden
is on a street corner,
there is a lot of foot traffic around it.
I do not have a fence.
so it does not make any sense for me
to try to keep things to myself.
So it was almost out of necessity
that I created a garden that
is open to the community.
This just happens to be where I can garden,
so I am gardening out front.
That necessity pulled me out of myself.
It pulled me out of my depression.
It put me back in touch with the community.
Now, a lot of different things have grown out of it.
I put out this little stand which has become an exchange.
When I have excess produce, I put it in there.
People can pick it up.
When people have excess stuff
from the neighborhood,
they will come and they will put it there.
It is a really nice way for people to
share what they have got.
I started the garden on this little plat right here,
which is about 10 by 20 feet.
That was the very first garden.
Everything else, when I started gardening,
was lawn, except for just a little border over here.
When I first started gardening,
it was not really in my mind to
do anything other than just to plant
a few flowers and to have a pretty garden.
The real urge to garden.
This particular garden came about
after I got really sick.
I hurt my back and had a couple of spine operations.
The recovery was very very difficult and long.
I was on a lot of medication.
I became very very depressed.
I found a very hard time motivating
myself to do anything.
I had so much pain I could not stand
for very long to do anything inside the house.
It was hard to imagine that I could
even do anything outside.
But I had this urge.
It was like an elemental force that said,
"Come and do this. You can do this."
I did not listen at first because it seemed impossible
when I could not stand up to cook a meal.
How was I going to come out and build a garden?
But that voice would not stop.
It just said, "Yeah, you can do this.
You can do this. Come out and garden."
One day, I remembered that I had
this little stool that rolled around.
I put on my back brace
and I slipped an ice pack in the back here.
I came out and before I knew it,
I had cleared up this space.
Within a few days, I actually planted my very first garden.
I got enough vegetables out of that
very first garden to share with a lot of people.
That is what got me going.
This part is the herb garden.
I always tell my students,
if you must have an herb garden,
you must put it really really close to your front door.
It has to be just within a few steps
so that when you want something,
you can walk out, clip it, and walk back inside.
I have parsley, oregano, all of my culinary herbs.
I also grow some medicinal herbs.
I have got lemon balm, lemon verbena, feverfew.
I like to make my own soaps.
I make my own creams and lotions.
I use the herbs and the flowers
from the garden to infuse oil.
From those oils, I make the different products.
That is pretty much what we use for the whole family.
I make enough so that I can ship
out to my family at Christmas time.
That is my Christmas gift.
Lavendar is one of my favorite plants.
It is one of my favorite scents.
I think it is really calming.
If you have any kind of anxiety,
you want to have lavendar growing in your garden,
certainly as a stress reliever.
It is just a wonderful scent.
This is french lavendar.
I propogated it and grew a whole
hedge out of that one plant.
This is one of the things I taught during the class.
I specifically created a path from one side to the other
to encourage people to come through the garden,
to wander, to cut through, and to sit down if they wish.
I have a lot of fruit trees growing.
This is my guava tree.
You can see some guavas.
I am going to be making guava jelly this year.
This is a tatsuma tangerine.
That is a mango tree right there.
It gave some beautiful mangoes.
There is a cherimoya tree, a couple
of pear trees, and plum and nectarine.
We have always got kale growing.
I like to keep the kale right in front
because I encourage people to pick it themselves.
The kids love to come by and pull
the kale and just chew on it.
This is my vegetable exchange stand.
People will bring things that they have extras of.
Whenever I have any extras,
I will put it in there.
Whatever is there, the neighborhood partakes.
I have a few more beans growing.
This was loaded up with beans.
You can see they are really drying up.
I have left them on the vine to dry up
because I want the seeds for next year.
I do not have to go buy any more seeds.
I just collect the dry seed pods.
Wait till they are completly dry and then
I will use those seeds for my next year's crop.
At the end, that little thing, that little pole
with the can at the top,
that is where I put peanuts for my friend, Bluejay.
He comes and eats the peanuts,
but he stays around and eats the bugs too.
I encourage him to visit the garden
because that is my pest control.
I have got bird feeders hanging all
through the garden for that same reason
because if you bring the birds to your garden,
they will help you out by eating the insects.
Today with the children of the neighborhood,
we planted the box.
This is our winter vegetable box.
We planted kale, lettuce, broccoli, onions.
There is cauliflower and there are
flowers growing to attract beneficial
insects all throughout the box.
At the bottom, it is full of logs.
It is called hugelkulture.
Because it is very expensive to fill
a box with a lot of soil.
You can get away by putting a bunch of twigs
and grasses and everything at the bottom.
Put about 4 inches of soil.
That is all you need to grow.
As things go along, the branches will decompose,
and actually rot and turn into soil,
so that is what is going on with this box.
We planted a bunch of trees along
the parkway now that we have got
permission to grow food on the parkways.
I have got citrus growing on the parkway.
The outside of the garden is not irrigated at all.
It only depends on whether I water it
or the weather waters it.
That is because it is meant to be a permaculture garden,
so it should not realy depend on watering.
It is hard to maintain at first,
but once you get it going,
you just have absolutely no worries.
It just keeps itself going.
It may not be obvious to put roses,
but roses are actually really hardy.
They are drought tollerant.
They will reward you with a profusion
of flowers whenever it starts to rain again.
I find them good plants to intersperse.
These are my favorite roses.
I plant roses in remembrance of people.
When I lose a friend or a family relative,
I will plant a rose bush.
This is my aunt's rose bush.
She likes yellow roses.
There is one planted for my mother.
It is my way of keeping their memory alive.
I have one more plant that, in terms
of memory, and keeping things alive
is really important to me, that I would like to show you.
It is over here. It is right by my door.
It is not a very showy plant at all.
It does not look fabulous, but it means a lot.
This aloe plant was given to me as a gift
from a family that has preserved it
since the middle passage.
This particular plant made it
through the middle passage,
was smuggled aboard ship by a slave.
It was grown in the fields of America.
That family escaped to freedom to Canada.
They took the plant with them
and grew it over there.
Some of them came back to the United States.
They came to Maryland.
They brought the plant to Maryland.
Some of them moved not too far from here,
a few blocks away from here.
I was lucky enough to get a piece of it.
We do not have very many things
to connect us to our past.
There is a big block that has been
taken away from us.
To have anything that you can touch,
that carries the memory of your ancestors.
They are not even blood related.
To me, this is my talisman.
It is amazing to have this.
It is just amazing.
I take my inspirations from some
people that I really admire.
Vandana Shiva is one of my heros.
She started the seed saving movement
in northern India after the epidemic
of farmer suicides up there.
She has been a real force against Monsanto.
She established an organization
that has really revitalized seed saving
and heirloom seeds in India.
Really, she is an amazing woman.
She is one of my inspirations.
She says that to garden, to produce
your own food is a revolutionary act.
because right now, we are so enslaved
by our systems, our food production systems,
the way that they have been set up.
There is not enough response to demand.
Our food is shipped from all over the place.
You do not know what is on it.
You do not know what pesticides are on it,
what preservatives.
Half the time it has been picked before it is ripe.
It has been, ya know, subjected to gas
in order to ripen it artificially.
It is not real nutritious food.
It is really really important, I think,
to everyone, to get their hands in the dirt,
and to get back to growing something,
whatever it is, on your balcony,
wherever you can find some open space,
a little bit of sunshine.
Grow something.
It will make you better.
It will make your life better.
Humans Who Grow Food
home gardeners, farmers and community
gardens across borders and cultures