'Lazy locavores,' revisited

The WSJ reports on lavish second-home gardens 8

I got a bit of flack for my post on "lazy locavores" earlier this week. Riffing off of a New York Times "trend" piece, I questioned the practice of "outsourcing one's veggie patch" -- paying someone to install, tend, and harvest a home veggie garden. I accused folks who use such services of having a "hyper-consumerist" take on local food -- of wanting the trappings and status of a home garden without getting their hands dirty.

Several people -- including energy blogger extraordinaire Bart Anderson -- cogently critiqued my position. "Is it not a good thing to support local organic gardeners? Is it not a good thing to encourage vegetable gardens?" Bart wrote. Another commenter chimed in:

The average lawn is a toxic waste dump, loaded with fertilizers, pesticides and is a massive consumer of water much less the amount of fuel needed to keep the mowers running. By turning those 1/4 acre dumps into productive farmland, everyone wins.

Okay, I agree. I was too hard on these armchair home gardeners. Now this, on the other hand, from a Wall Street Journal article called "The Vegetable Patch Goes Luxe":

Some people are paying tens of thousands of dollars to have landscape architects design and install elaborate vegetable gardens. These homeowners regard their plots as edible showplaces, where they take guests on tours of manicured beds of baby bok choy and Japonica maize the way others show off their koi ponds and rose bushes.

Okay, edible landscaping is good, no objections! But ...

... since many homeowners have these gardens installed at second homes they rarely visit, or are away from their garden for weeks while on vacation, the owners may not even be around to enjoy the bounty.

Hmmm. Thoughts?

Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow my Twitter feed; contact me at tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org.

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  1. Caroline Posted 11:09 am
    25 Jul 2008

    The WSJ articleFrom the article, it seems that many of the people who are rich enough to get these designer gardens ARE actually digging them themselves, and if they are  not then at least the produce is going to employees, friends and dinner party guests. A part of me wishes that some of them expressed an interest in giving the produce to the poor, or to soup kitchens, but I suppose I cannot have everything. It's certainly a better use of land than acres and acres of ornamental lawn.
    I'm just jealous that my own little patch isn't anything as wonderful as these!I am getting older and more arthritic yearly, and sometimes just like to imagine having somebody garden for me...

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  2. Wolverine Posted 7:54 am
    26 Jul 2008

    Tom, You Were Half RightIt's a no brainer that an organic food garden is far superior to an ornamental lawn or garden laced with chemicals and sucking massive amounts of water.  However, it's also environmentally destructive to have people driving to your home to do the gardening instead of doing it yourself.  So your first instinct was correct.

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  3. MAD MAC Posted 7:47 pm
    26 Jul 2008

    So if you don't have the time to do it yourself...... then better to not have a garden, but just let your property grow up like a jungle. Your neighbors will love you.

    Victory in Pattani

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  4. Wolverine Posted 12:11 pm
    27 Jul 2008

    If you don't have the time to do it yourself...plant native plants and just let them grow.  And screw any anti-environmental neighbors who don't like natural plants.  Anyone with this attitude should be sent to the moon with eight hours of oxygen.  If you don't like this planet, please leave!

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  5. amazingdrx Posted 2:06 pm
    27 Jul 2008

    WellThen the people who tend the garden when they are away can harvest and use the veggies, if there's a surplus they can take them to a farmer's market or donate them to a local food pantry, daycare center, or even a school.
    This is a miniscule problem, as the ranks of the people rich enough to do this are a tiny percentage of the population.  It's an encouraging trend though.  Organic gardening carries status.

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

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  6. John former Marine Posted 12:48 am
    29 Jul 2008

    Camel-swallowing....I'm a big fan of efficiency.  I don't see how having an organic landscape "greens" a second home.  Having lived in a small town in Maine where 85% of the homes were only inhabited for a few weekends/yr., I have to say that an edible landscape would make almost no difference.  When your gargantuan cabin is sucking down 200 gallons of fuel oil (or a lot more) every month to keep the place heated when nobody is living there, I don't see how growing a few organic brussels sprouts makes the place any better.
    As to the idea that a status-carrying trend will spread to the rest of the population, I'll have to disagree entirely.  Most popular trends come from the bottom up, not the top down.  For example, bling bling jewelry and baggy pants.  You didn't see people wearing accessories like that on Cape Cod and then two years later, everybody is doing it.  No, fashionable trends come out of the ghetto.  I think that if organic agriculture is going to move forward as a "trend," it will come from the inner-city community gardens on abandoned lots, not from second home-owners in Cape Cod, Aspen, or Maine.

    Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

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  7. John former Marine Posted 12:58 am
    29 Jul 2008

    btw...By the way, for those of you who didn't catch it, I used the term camel-swallowing because I love the biblical saying "Strain at a gnat, swallow a camel."  Despite being a recovering cultist Pentacostal, I do believe that there is some (very minimal) wisdom to be found in the Bible.
    It seems the "fixes" for all of the problems we create are bigger than the problems themselves...like the Big Dig.  Yet we strain at swallowing gnats....

    Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

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  8. Bart Anderson's avatar

    Bart Anderson Posted 9:36 am
    03 Aug 2008

    FramingThanks for the sobriquet, Tom. I'll do my best to live up to it.
    So much of the debate swirling around the issue has to do with framing.  
    For example, what would you say is better:


    Spending $50,000 on a new luxury SUV

    Spending $50,000 on employing local labor to build an organic garden


    It's all in how you pose the question. An anecdote from a Buddhist teacher illustrates this:
    A novice monk approached the master, and asked:

    - Is it permissible to smoke while I am meditating?
    The master was furious at this impertinent request and sent the novice away.
    A few months went by and the master forgot the incident. Meanwhile the novice thought and thought (he still wanted to smoke). After a while and approached with a new request:

    - Is it permissible to meditate while I am smoking?

    - Of course, of course!  Meditation is always good. Your zeal is most commendable!

    Bart


    Energy Bulletin

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