Giardini Gardens Design Process, Part 1

Paige (my love, wife/partner, best friend, fellow gardener) and I are now officially in the beginning stages of the design process for Giardini Gardens, the "farm" part of a farm-to-table restaurant called Giardini Trattoria. Oh, and the best part:  we get to live there, implement the design and hopefully watch it evolve while working with the land for years to come!!! Thank you UNIVERSE!!

The restaurant is in the beautiful Appalachian foothills of Polk County, NC about 45 minutes south from our current home in Asheville. We were offered the garden manager positions about 3 weeks ago and were only side-tracked from jumpstarting the transition by a previously scheduled event, our wedding/ celebration of love /commitment-ceremony on Jan 26! Though we did spend a fair bit of time drooling over seed catalogs, we made sure to prioritize this special day which resulted in an awesome and wonderful happening, indeed!

I had to include at least one shot from the big day!!

This weekend, we packed up all the design manuals, plant books, and various pages of handwritten workshop notes that we could find in our current dwelling of 200 sq ft, and we headed to the library and started making lists.

Since there is much already happening on the Giardini ('garden' in Italian) property, we wanted to first create profiles of independent, already existing elements and infrastructure within the 7 acres. For each element (e.g. greenhouse, pavilion, tool shed) we made detailed lists which covered current and potential functions, required needs and inputs, desired/possible augmentations to the present existence, as well as its relation to various "sectors" such as sun, wind, pollution, noise, and marauding hoards. This is much in line with what we were taught in our Permaculture Design Certificate course, as well as what many great designers and theorists often write about.

Though our relationship with the landowners is still very young, we feel a tremendous sense of support and openness from them, which makes the whole thing so much more exciting from the get-go. It is incredible to feel so valued.We are so grateful to them for this opportunity and are really hoping to reciprocate the blessing by bringing earth-care and biodiversity to this land!

I intend to keep account of this whole process via this blog, but I am simultaneously also setting the goal to keep detailed planting, financial, and operations records, so we will see how it all balances out soon I suppose.

It is so great to finally be given so much creative freedom, and to share this experience with Paige! We have a lot of ideas, perhaps too many for the first year, but we are ready to have all those ideas turned upside down. We feel ready to learn and we feel willing to put forth all of energy in the process.

Considering that it is the beginning of February and beds are not prepped, the greenhouse has ripped plastic on 2 sides, we haven't ordered any new seeds, and we aren't even yet moved into the on-site housing, we are realizing that we may have to make some concessions the first year, and we are still doing our best to try to minimize them, and keep our eyes on long-term gains, rather than short-term. Somewhere between the purists and the corner-cutters, you'll find us... but we'll probably be hanging out with the purists, milking their brains.

We are decidedly not tilling the central ( what we have been referring to as the "heart") garden beds. I think at this point, we will keep about 80-90% of them in annual crop rotation, but we will likely end up preparing them by adding some local horse manure, loosening with a broad-fork, and mulching with straw.

The soil seems like premo, floodplain sandy loam, super loose top soil even after several regional freezes, and has been in cultivation for I think nearly 10 years. We had observed these traits and the soil type was confirmed as a representation of the entire site, when I used the GPS coordinates to to a Web Soil Survey (excellent resource from the NRCS, google it friends!).

Anyway, the color and consistency is nice, but organic matter undetermined at this point. I know it was tilled every year, mulched recently, and never harmed by any chemicals. There is, however, a fair amount of bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon) surrounding the perimeter of the approx 80' x80' square of about 30, 2' x 16' beds. For those of you unfamiliar with Bermuda grass, be warned. For those of you who know the wrath of this wily plant, wish us luck, or better, offer us advice!

We will try cutting defined edges, planting  different perennial, strong rooted herbs on the caps of the east-west running beds, making for a nice diversified aesthetic, as an attempt to outwit the bermuda.We may also try introducing a hardy ground cover plant that Paige has heard/read, as a nitrogen fixing pathway competitor, Birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus). We'll see if it can handle the high foot traffic that may come along with our concern for the veggies. Well-irrigation is present, so water will be relatively clean and abundant.

As of now, much thought has gone into many Zones 0 and 1 elements other than the heart garden. We are excited about softening edges, designating walkways, and making the whole place a more plant and fun filled, experimental restorative ecosystem. But tonight, I got the inspiration for jumping online to write this blog from reading (in a book called Soil Fertility by E. Pfieffer) about different soil-friendly rotations of annual veggies, because I realized, until we get those perennial vegetables propagated and pumpin', annuals is all we got! And it's what everybody eats.. for now! I haven't even brought up our micro-greens plan yet... or my exciting encounter at the Asheville Botanical Gardens when I went to inquire about riparian restoration plant lists for the creek running through the property!! So much to say, but alas Paige has been asleep for over 3 hours, maybe I should join her...damn insomnia-inducing enthusiasm!

Area within Zone 1, in front of the pavilion. Before:  bland grasses, weeds, bocce ball court and boardwalk. After (coming soon): diversified herb production, perennial insectary plants for pollinators, color, color, color, and well-defined path (bocce and boardwalk will still be there too, of course. Creek runs to the right of pavilion, north-south).