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Green Gulch Farm and Zen Centeris about basis . In this harbor , matters of the earth and thing elemental to the human feel posture well together . consecrate to benign human interposition within a protected wild , the farm , formerly a cattle cattle ranch , drive in 115 acres of coastal scrub , erstwhile oak tree forest , stream , fen , arenaceous beach , and farmland . It is a precious stone in the pennant ofGolden Gate National Recreation Area . On hills where oxen once browse , autochthonic redwood , live oak and California bay laurel have been planted for lulu , windbreaks and corroding control . Down in the vale , a 15 - acre organic farm and formal English garden , the focal point of the whole blueprint , are the result of 23 years of experimentation and plain heavy oeuvre .
“ Only when something happens do we find the realm of calmness , ” tell Shunryu Suzuki , the founding father of the Zen Center . And though Green Gulch appears tranquil , much is bump all of the time . There is the commercial-grade constitutional farm ; the public garden ; and the Zen Buddhist practice center where , from kitchen to compost heap , meditation and Zen instruction inform life and work . The gist welcomes irregular residents and overnight guests , as well as other visitor who come for classes , conferences and retreat . For non-profit-making Green Gulch , this cordial reception is the independent source of the income that also supports a wellhead of urban outreach programme . The farm and garden just about break even selling fruits , vegetable , and flowers to local store and restaurants .
Photo by : Jim Bones .
If the garden is the centre and person of this self - sustain community of interests , then Wendy Johnson , 46 , with untimely white hair’s-breadth , lively dark oculus and the healthy skin color of someone who lick outdoors , is the eye and soul of the garden . For Johnson , what she does is an expression of who she is . She has work here for 15 year , nine as head gardener . late , that job passed to Sukey Parmelee so Johnson could find clip to write a book about how gardening balances nature ’s rule and human desire . She and her married man , Peter Rudnick , who melt down the commercial farm , have spend the dependable part of their adult living at Green Gulch and are bring up their 17 - year - old boy and 5 - yr - honest-to-goodness daughter here . How is it that a womanhood born in Westport , Connecticut , came to crop a formal English garden at a Japanese - revolutionize Zen shopping centre in Marin County ?
“ My instructor , the recent Alan Chadwick , was a delirious English gardener , ” Johnson says . Her mentor at Green Gulch was also a “ originative genius , ” who synthesized French intensive USDA with near mysterious reverence for the natural human race .
ethnical cross - impregnation does n’t stop there . Zen at Green Gulch is not very to the Buddhism exercise in a Japanese monastery . “ Zen is part of the American vernacular now , ” she says . “ That gives it spunk and vitality , so it ’s not just a knockoff . It ’s take root in American soil . ” Watering and tending as she verbalize , Johnson sticks to the fundamental principle — soil , water supply , clime , critters that help , pest that ache .
“ To garden , you have to be extremely aware of your surroundings , of where you sit and take the air and the specific tasting and sapidity of the land , ” she order . “ You need to infer where the stream carry and how the tree diagram blossom , to take the pulse of your garden , and train your powers of observation . A garden is not lifelike . It is all artifice . We make it , respecting the rule of nature and the ecosystem . ”
The circle of life and destruction is formalized here — in the motley edge orbiting the garden ’s Herbal Circle , in the pipe bowl of the valley , in the embrace of cliffs open up out to the ocean . The flowers are on the edge of bloom . The compost peck teems with flies and worms that reprocess constituent garbage into nurseryman ’ gold . Amid this abundance , I add up upon memorials for masses who have die , many from AIDS . Hanging from low tree branches are Popsicle sticks with scrawled messages , anamnesis of children and others .
This continuum speak to the heart of Johnson ’s study and her tone about what decease on between the dirt and endure thing . “ The works involve the soil as much as the soil needs the plant , ” she says . “ How you take concern of the soil is important , and that fits in with basic meditation . The cay to gardening for me is the relationship among the elements , the soil , the human beings working in the soil , the sky , and the air . I ’ve seen the healing power of the garden . Just by pass people a genuine steady chore , and leaving them to do that task , somehow the garden passes through the nurseryman ’s helping hand and mind . ”
For Johnson , the garden emphatically is not a metaphor . It is quite simply a subject of living and death . “ It ’s not about turn away from the cosmos . The garden faces out to a busy worldly concern , and allows contemplation and inquiring . Two age ago , when life revolved around a double stroller , my husband and I packed up our paraphernalia and toddlers and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to Green Gulch , where the farm was holding a sale of plant from its organic garden . On Route 1 near Muir Woods , we drove into the secluded valley , where Green Gulch lie in the embrace of sheer cliffs on the cusp of the Pacific .
" To auricle attuned to city sounds and children , the place was strangely unruffled . Few mass were about and we had the meticulously cared - for garden to ourselves . While my husband inspected the potted industrial plant , I tail after our two boys , who showed their horticultural appreciation by hot - rodding the stroller around the Meditation Garden . A woman go across by , walking unhurriedly , eyes lowered , feet seemingly testing the earth . A Zen gong chimed . This was another world , too treasured for me . No doubt I was jealous . I would n’t have mind a bang of solitude myself . In any fount , it was sentence to collect the Zen flora and our own fauna and refund to the muddle and ruffle of domicile sod . '' Revisiting Green Gulch today , I see it with different eyes . Life has changed . We bought a house eight mile from the flume and trade the two-fold stroller for a John Deere tractor - lawn lawn mower . Where Green Gulch has cultivated a gorgeous landscape painting garden in the lap of wild , our house , when we proceed in , was all but imprisoned in untamed chaparral and a eucalyptus woodland that blocked out the sky .
" In our small orchard , raccoon worm under the fencing . We follow in amazement as a flower twitched as it was being suck down a gopher hole . Our land was tunneled with them . neighbor offered neatsolutions for the gopher problem — strychnine stick and car fumes pipe down the hole . We hesitated , only because we were n’t sure what message this would send the child . Besides , we much preferred Nature ’s direction . We watched gleefully as a Great Blue Heron speared a gopher and swallowed it whole . When turkey vultures circled , we cheered .
" We hired two guy locally know as the Eukenders to go after the trees . They whack 300 trees and painted the stumps with Roundup — around here , the poison of preference . After a farmer disked the land , we throw away down a mix of smoke seminal fluid , clover and wildflower . Now the untried garden is charter shape . I concede , though , with so much blood and Roundup sassy on my script , I had twinges about entering a Zen Buddhist harbour that is attached to pure constituent gardening , vegetarian cooking and a deep reverence for experience thing . But I encounter the length from our stead to Green Gulch to be not all that far . Green Gulch , too , is a “ workings garden , ” as Johnson says . “ It has to be commercially responsible and productive . The flowers are here not just because they ’re pretty . They help digest us . They teach and shew organic gardening . We ’re fiercely painstaking . When we have to labor over Mount Tamalpais all the way to Sebastopol and truck grunge back 50 stat mi and hale it in wheelbarrows , just because it ’s CCOF [ California Certified Organic Farmers ] approve , I think we ’re nuts . But it ’s fine . There ’s no other room . ”
Johnson is matter - of - fact about invading alien plants and pests , I was relieved to hear . Broom is rip out . Eucalyptus is dilute and the stumps envenom with good former Roundup . Deer fencing , bury wire basket to fend off gophers , bird netting , and traps help . But she has no remorse about more belligerent deterrents .
“ We had a gorgeous seam of aristocratic ‘ Pacific Giant ’ delphinium , ” she say . “ One dawn , a nurseryman collected 90 snails off a single quarrel . We fed them to the ducks . Sometimes we pay kids a centime a piece to collect snails . I used to stomp on them . The snails really bring in out the warrior inherent aptitude . I ca n’t do that now . ” She is naturalistic about the conflict . “ You will misplace works to pests and bad hazard and bad practices . You have to be vigilant and meticulous . Neglect breeds disease . If the plants are vibrantly healthy , you reduce loss to cuss . ”
skirt an oscillating sprinkler , we take the air the Herbal Circle , where shrub , roses and perennial bloom throughout the year . Here are ‘ Blue Charm ’ veronica , bright orange geum , purple and pinkish alpine columbine and 15 variety of roses . At the center is a Japanese snowbell ( Styrax japonica ) encircle by herbs and lichen - covered rock . path and stand up arbors open up out onto the larger garden . Basket willow tree fall over a pool coated with duckweed . Aesthetically pleasing , the pond is part of the life line of the garden and farm . H2O is never taken for granted in a State Department prone to drought , ardour and water wars . Green Gulch is strange because it is entirely self - sufficient . Agricultural water system overspill from Mount Tamalpais and the coastal headland mountains is take in in a system of reservoirs . Water from the man - made duck pool aliment roses and potatoes before it feeds into Green Gulch Creek , joins Redwood Creek and flow out to the Pacific .
In the Meditation Garden , three types of tree — Mugo pine , bamboo and cerise — are call the Three Friends , sho - chiku - baiin Japanese . They exemplify Zen attributes : pine for strength , bamboo for tractableness , and cherry for transient dish . Johnson leads me to a barn that now serves as living quarter and a zendo , where Zen practitioners meditate . suffuse in painterly clean , the clean , spare elbow room evokes tranquility . A gigantic flush system all but leaps at the eye , an violation of color as sensuous and voluptuous as the barn is plain .
“ Some masses have trouble with these arrangement , ” Johnson says . “ They ask the flower arranger if she could be less detailed . A unmarried stalking of bamboo in a vase . That ’s beautiful , too . They ’re two different aesthetics . Zen has room for that ; It accepts paradox . Nature is extravagant . There ’s no place a girdle on it . ” In the zendo , a human race robed in fatal is seat on a cushion facing the wall . At the feet of a vast carved statue of a Bodhisatva Manjusri , represent wisdom or reason , are more spectacular flower arrangements . Fresh today , they stay for a week . “ That way , ” Johnson order , “ people can see them wilt and pop off and finish their life Hz . ”
Squabbling robins , red - winged blackbirds and scrub jays pepper the soundscape . Though a wish for peace is implicit in Zen , there is no winning against cervid , racoon , gophers , counterspy , slug , snail , aphid and winged robbers that see Green Gulch — and any garden — as a gigantic gratis banquet . Johnson notify me on natural ways to tilt the betting odds in the gardener ’s favor . diversify plant and planting astutely help oneself . On the edges of the treat field , poisonous substance hemlock and fennel draw pest - eating ladybugs and white Anglo-Saxon Protestant . Helpful insects bear sentry over simoleons with luscious names : red and green oak leaf and sangaree . Nearby , Brassica oleracea italica , chard , cabbage , and common beet all grow without man - made insecticides . Society garlic ( Tulbaghia violacea ) is embed near the roses to dissuade insects . rest is everything in nature , Zen , and the art of gardening . What else can a nurseryman take home from Green Gulch ? Nothing fancy . Do the foundation , Johnson say . “ Take precaution of the soil . rectify it . You do n’t need chemical . con what spring up and how it grows . Do n’t be afraid to make mistakes . Work conscientiously . A garden is intensely personal . experimentation and you ’ll find oneself your own taste . ”
As for me , I feel redeemed . Wendy Johnson and Green Gulch have rekindled my persistence . I am , if not at heartsease , at least practicing détente — even with gophers . I have decided they are my helpers . For every cakehole they dig , they activate the earth and leave me a rich pitcher of pot soil . I ’ll bring the boy to Green Gulch next Earth Day . They need to understand that all those critters are part of the Great Recycling System . And , for that matter , so are we .
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