海角大神

Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates are not your average backyard gardeners. They call themselves plant geeks, and they鈥檙e not kidding.

Toensmeier sustained a serious head injury in 1994, and to heal, he memorized thousands of Latin plant names, families, orders, and superorders. He also cross-indexed a tome of edible plants with references listing cold-hardy varieties and perennials. Bates studied biology and ecology and spends a lot of time poring over Plants for a Future, an online database of useful plants. Not surprisingly, when the two friends bought a duplex together in 2004, they didn鈥檛 build your average garden.

They set out with a list of ambitious goals. They wanted to transform their yard into a permaculture oasis by planting 鈥渁 mega-diverse living ark of useful and multifunctional plants鈥� from their bioregion and around the world. They hoped to harvest 鈥渢wo handfuls of fresh fruit every day for everybody in the house, including guests, for as long a season as possible,鈥� and also to attract birds, beneficial insects, and a couple of bachelorettes.

Toensmeier, the main author of "Paradise Lot," who also wrote "Perennial Vegetables" and co-wrote "Edible Forest Gardens," doesn鈥檛 skimp on details about how he and Bates turned a 鈥渄ead and blighted鈥� one-tenth of an acre of compacted soil in a 鈥渂iologically impoverished neighborhood鈥� of Holyoke, Mass., into Food Forest Farm, an Eden for edibles. Although it is more memoir than how-to, "Paradise Lot" outlines the basics of sheet mulching, raising silkworms, keeping chickens, and growing mushrooms. Readers will gain an understanding of the principles and objectives of permaculture, a movement that began in Australia in the 1970s. It combines indigenous land management practices, ecological design, and sustainable methods to create low-maintenance gardens that function like natural ecosystems.

It鈥檚 inspiring and a little daunting to read about what Toensmeier and Bates achieved on their small plot in eight years. They managed to transform their Massachusetts front yard into a tropical garden. In their backyard, they installed a pond, shed, and greenhouse, and they grow about 160 edible perennials, many of which you鈥檝e likely never heard of before. Here鈥檚 an inventory of the berries they harvest each season: honeyberries, strawberries, goumi cherries, Gerardi dwarf mulberries, four kinds of currants, gooseberries, jostas, blueberries, wild raspberries, golden Anne raspberries, ground-cherries, wintergreen berries, juneberries, and lingonberries.

Toensmeier hopes the complexity and diversity of Food Forest Farm won鈥檛 dissuade beginners from experimenting with permaculture in their backyards, since part of the reason they undertook the project in an urban area with typical inner-city problems was to make it a relevant example for amateurs to emulate.

鈥淥ur desire to try many new things鈥攏ew models of production, hundreds of new and interesting species鈥攎eant that we put a lot more time into a garden of this size than any reasonable person would ever do,鈥� he writes. It鈥檚 helpful that the book shares the friends鈥� ample mistakes, setbacks, and revisions, making it clear that the most important thing a gardener needs if embarking on a similar project is a dedication to experimentation.

"Paradise Lot" offers gardeners more than inspiration and instruction. Toensmeier and Bates present an unconventional alternative to the American dream: two single men committed to a friendship and to making their backyard and neighborhood better.

鈥淭rusting each other with such a responsibility felt especially rare in this world,鈥� Bates writes in one of the short essays he contributes to Toensmeier鈥檚 text. The friends鈥� dedication to each other and to a patch of land paid off. 鈥淲e made our little paradise here,鈥� Toensmeier writes.

Moreover, "Paradise Lot" is permeated by an incredibly hopeful and compelling vision of humans鈥� place in nature. Toensmeier is critical of the environmental movement鈥檚 emphasis on minimizing footprints, because he thinks that permaculture and indigenous land management practices offer us ways to affect ecosystems for the better. After all, he and Bates turned a barren lot into a habitat for fish, snails, frogs, salamanders, raccoons, opossums, woodchucks, bugs, and worms.

And the wildlife actually helps them manage the garden. The birds eat insects. The opossums eat rotten fruit when it drops. The squirrels eat unwanted Norway maple seedlings. Some permaculture farmers even employ squirrels as labor by setting out buckets near their nut trees, letting the squirrels fill them, and swapping the nuts for corn.

Toensmeier is convinced it鈥檚 time for us to re-evaluate our ideas of 鈥渘ature,鈥� 鈥渁griculture,鈥� and 鈥渨ilderness鈥� and embrace the potential to transform our communities into beautiful, healthy ecosystems like Food Forest Farm.

鈥淚magine what would happen,鈥� he writes, 鈥渋f we as a species paid similar attention to all the degraded and abandoned lands of the world.鈥�

鈥� Abby Quillen wrote this article for , the Summer 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Abby is a freelance writer in Eugene, Ore. She blogs at .

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