Omaha By Design: Omaha, Only Better

by Ken Mayer

I taught myself to cook. I was in graduate school, and I’d found a couple of books in the bargain bin by a famous French chef that explained the basics, complete with pictures in the margins. Armed with a couple of knives and a food processor, I began to build on what I’d learned from my mom.

I soon realized a couple of things about food. First, a lot of good eats are really more wait than work. Bread takes time to rise, stews take time to braise. Second, the finished dish is profoundly dependent on the quality of ingredients. Ripeness and freshness count.

That’s why good cooks are often good gardeners. Beyond raw materials for a meal, it seems to me there is much to learn from the garden.

My garden has taught me to be a better planner. In the spring, I have to think about what I will plant, how much and where. Some plants, like some people, don’t grow well under the same conditions or in close proximity to each other or in the same place, year after year.

My garden has taught me to share. I can’t always eat or preserve everything I grow, so I share with my friends and neighbors. I even plant enough to let the birds and squirrels and even a groundhog have a little something to eat.

My garden has taught me to be patient and flexible. Plants don’t always behave as I would like them to, just like some people. But if I care for them properly and allow them to grow in their own way and in their own time, I’m usually rewarded.

My garden has taught me to be observant and responsive. The arc of growth and ripening requires me to pay attention and act at the right time in the right way. As in many things, timing is critical. There is a world of difference between vegetables that were picked minutes ago and those that were picked weeks ago.

My garden has taught me acceptance. Nature is what it is. There are things I can control and things I cannot. All I have to do is learn the difference and gracefully accept what I can’t change.

Garden knowledge informs not only the gardener, but the community as well. Stephanie Ahlschwede, the BIG Garden program director, observed, “We are seeing neighbors who had never met, forming friendships, strangers coming by to help tend plants, children leading their parents to the gardens and asking if they can help, and neighbors stopping by just to enjoy the space and the gardeners.”

At the BIG garden located at 25th and E, it’s more than just a community. In the great tradition of the melting pot, the site boasts a real American stir fry of gardeners. “I was here one day,” Ahlschwede said, “and there were white people, people from somewhere in Korea, people from the Philippines, people from several Spanish speaking countries and someone in a wheelchair, and they are all working together on each other’s beds.”

Gardening has always been a way for Americans to express their individuality, interdependence and self-reliance. America’s great intellect (and contradiction), Thomas Jefferson was an avid gardener. After he left the White House in 1809 and returned to Monticello, Jefferson grew 170 varieties of fruits and 330 varieties of vegetables and herbs in his garden.

He was not farming this part of his estate per se. He freely shared plants and seeds with friends and neighbors rather than taking them to market. Known for his meticulous record keeping in every aspect of his life, Jefferson documented when each seed was sown, when it sprouted, flowered, was eaten or died.

In 1786, Jefferson and Adams had taken a garden tour of England. Jefferson understandably disliked the English, but he was surprised when he realized that their gardens weren’t English at all, rather, they were full of American species. This revelation probably helped him create his garden without feeling unpatriotic.

This got me thinking. Maybe we ought to take a break from the fireworks this summer and contemplate the American garden.

In Jefferson’s words, “No occupation is so delightful to me as the cultivation of the earth. Such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another…though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”