Rooting in Rich Soil

Dear Friends,

I’ve been thinking about beginnings, endings, and new beginnings early in this month of remembrance; March is the month of Paula’s birth, and also of Paula’s death and William’s death, two years apart and one week apart. A book has accompanied me: The Afterlife of Gardens, by John Dixon Hunt. I suppose you could say it’s a book about perpetual beginnings—a collection of essays on how a garden is experienced across time, in some cases across eras, by those who visit. All while the garden itself evolves, of course, until perhaps “this ‘afterlife’ of gardens comes to enhance the original moment of creation.”

I had this book and its questions in my mind as I traveled last week to Hāʻena, on the island of Kauaʻi. At the extraordinary Limahuli Garden & Preserve, a small group of land stewards had gathered, thanks to the Jonathan and Kathleen Altman Foundation, to delve into the processes, practices, and mysteries of cultivating soil health. Basking in legendary hospitality, and in the songs and chants of that storied place, we planted trees together in the lower preserve, made medicines from ʻōlena and aloe, haʻuoi, and kukui, and exchanged ideas and posed questions about soil.

The story of soil in Peʻahi, as it is in any place, is long, with dimensions known, unknown, dynamic, and perhaps even unknowable. But when W.S. Merwin arrived there in 1977, the state of the soil at that time was made clear in a handwritten note on the county records: “Nothing will grow here.” Of this declaration, William wrote: “I was not discouraged by the fact that the soil was ruined. I had long wanted to restore a piece of ruined land.” The first step was indeed healing the soil. And among William’s papers we have begun to find traces of how he took to this work—what he had learned from his Occitan neighbors in Southwest France; whose counsel he sought here in Hawaiʻi and put into practice; which observations informed his approaches as the first palms settled into recovering soil and began to grow.

Fifty years later, as one of the many stewards of today’s palm garden and one of the lucky participants in this gathering in Hāʻena, I relished the opportunity to learn from brilliant friends at Limahuli Garden & Preserve, Kahanu Garden & Preserve, and the Allerton and McBryde Gardens of National Tropical Botanical Gardens here in Hawaiʻi, and the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center in Sonoma, California. Each of them shared their deep knowledge and generous hearts, and their capacities to imagine bioculturally rich landscapes, healthier food systems, and resilient futures across vast spatial and temporal scales—both microbial and multigenerational. I could not be more thrilled that one of those brilliant minds and generous hearts belongs to The Merwin Conservancy’s new Head of Horticulture, Garden & Grounds, Sarah Bryce. (It was she who put The Afterlife of Gardens into my hands.) Her tenure at the Conservancy will be rooted in the rich soil of this gathering, and in her own deep knowledge, creativity, and passion for plants and place—and her love of poetry! You can read more about our new colleague below, and join me in welcoming her.

At our Hāʻena convening, I sensed William and Paula with us when someone mentioned the shared etymology of human and humus (and of humble and humility, as I later learned). And I laughed with delight when, as follow up to a discussion question about a particular aspect of building healthy soil, someone asked, “to what end?” And someone else chimed in: “to what beginning?”

With warm wishes,

Sonnet