The Seed Of Life Garden as a Community Garden

The Seed of Life Garden at the Jacobson's Dude Ranch is the result of a year long series of classes that were held on location throughout 2004. Kathleen Irving created the project with the collaboration of Sierra College and the Nevada County Peace Center. This was a self-sufficiency start up garden project that utilized the Seed of Life pattern to structure and organize a garden for individuals who desired to transition towards sustainability but did not know where to start.

The classes met every 1st and 3rd Monday of each month and the step by step installation process was taught while the students built a demonstration garden on site. With the help of the Union Newspaper (see newspaper article below) and a local television talk show called Reality Check with Lou Meyers, the word got out into our community and 55 people attended the first class. The interest was much greater than I expected and I was thrilled to have about 20 students who attended most of the classes. Experts from the community taught the classes as volunteers and the students each paid $5 per class in order to compensate the Jacobson's and purchase the materials for constructing the garden.

The garden was completed in 2004 and then adopted by a man who was transitioning from having been homeless. He has since moved on and the garden is being maintained by Kathy Irving in order to facilitate the goals of the Wellness Policy's implementation in the Nevada County School System.

The ongoing series of classes that generated the first community garden of this type created the garden with the hope that it will facilitate the Nevada County School System's use of the garden as an outdoor classroom and as a model for transitioning towards sustainability.

Garden guru - Sustainable gardening is Nevada City woman's passion
by David Mirhadi
January 5, 2004
The Union Newspaper

It was a simple, earthy idea, Kathy Irving says, that practically came to her in a dream. As a student at the mysteriously named "Dreamtimes Center for Herbal Studies" in rural western Virginia six years ago, Irving was charged with creating a medicinal healing garden as part of a class project.

And though her story sounds like something created out of a science fiction novel or mystic religious text - for guidance in creating the garden, Irving called upon the Overlighting Deva of Healing, a sort of fifth-dimensional frequency founded in nature intelligence - the garden has real-life applications for those searching for food beyond supermarket shelves.

"I know this sounds weird," Irving said. In today's mass-market society, where fresh peaches in winter are as available as they are in July, Irving worries about the world relying too much on the convenience of such things, forgetting that mere mortals can plant and grow their own self-sustaining produce and create a better world in the process.

Irving begins today the "Seed of Life Gardening Project," an ongoing class designed to teach locals the benefits of and theories behind growing self-sustaining gardens.

"It's totally unconventional, I realize, but it works. It serves the purpose of connecting people with the land."

Put simply, Irving wants people to realize tomatoes don't sprout in supermarkets.

The classes will meet twice monthly at a Nevada City ranch, where people will learn to create self-sufficiency gardens with flowers, herbs and food plants arranged in a circular pattern.

They will also learn how composting and soil testing can help them maintain their gardens.

Irving, who grows similar gardens at her home north of Nevada City, said the concept needn't be shunned by those whose only trips to a garden consist of a cruise by the all-you-can-eat salad bar.

"It's a totally workable concept. It's a pragmatic and practical approach to transitioning toward growing your own food and medicine."

The gardens themselves are arranged in circular patterns, representing the center of a flower. They often include rings of herbs, vegetables, fruits and flowers. In most cases, every part of the garden can be used.

Each garden provides a way for humans to choose for themselves what they want to eat. In a consumer society in which 70 percent of the food in grocery stores is genetically engineered or processed in some way, she said, this lets people grow their food their way.

"I believe the only way to address the large-scale problems that we have ... the toxins in our environment, the decrease of nutritional value in our food, we have to take responsibility for growing our own diverse food and medicine.

"We need a change in how we relate to our food," she said.

Irving, a landscape designer, isn't your, ahem, garden-variety New Age hippie. The Fort Rucker, Ala., native moved with her family all over the country, to Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Bolivia and Alaska, following her father's job. She eats fish, chicken and lamb, she said, eschewing beef. "I saw them being slaughtered once when I was 3, and I got scared," she said.

Irving hopes the class makes people think about the food they eat and how that affects the world they live in.

It's the process of imagining a project and turning it into something real that charges her.

"People want to move toward sustainability, and this is just one spot to begin," she said. There will be skeptics - those who believe the gardens to be a pie in the sky. That's OK, Irving said. As long as they're curious.

"I'm totally excited about this. I feel I was born to do this." ~~