Alice Waters and Maria Montessori

About two weeks ago at the Philadelphia Flower Show I saw a recreation of Dr. Maria Montessori's children's garden.  I was inspired.

Since we moved here to this suburban home with a half-acre lot I've had big plans for what I want to do with our landscape and our garden, but my lack of experience (have never had a sunny patch of dirt before) and my lack of time (pregnant or with a newborn during the spring/summer) made getting started a daunting task.

But I loved the Montessori garden display at the flower show. It's so much of what I've wanted to do -- a kitchen garden. This one had chili peppers, tomatoes, swiss chard, and grape vines, among other edible crops.

And I remember back at our old Montessori daycare in California that part of the program for the children was gardening and growing food, and then participating in the preparation of the food, and then eating it. I loved that.

And then I just saw Alice Waters on 60 Minutes. Now, I spend a lot of time in my high tech fog a lot of the time, so probably everybody in the world is familiar with Alice Waters except for me. It's especially embarrassing since she's such an icon in Berkeley, Calif., just a car drive away from where we lived in Silicon Valley. I mean we could have gone to her restaurant. We could have seen this cool cool project that she funds called The Edible Schoolyard where middle school students learn about organic gardening. The second part of The Edible Schoolyard course is preparing and eating the food -- very very much like the Dr. Maria Montessori garden.

Waters talks about how people don't know how to cook anymore. So true. We buy so many convenience foods. We eat more cheese doodles than spinach. We don't know how to prepare beets. This, she says, is related to the obesity epidemic.

She talks about how foods should be grown locally, and she uses only in season food at her restaurant, Chez Panisse.

I love and agree with all these things, and they just make me more inspired about gardening this summer in the beginnings of my Montessori children's garden that I will share with my little boys.

Now, my schedule continues to be relentless -- a full time job, two young boys, going on 4 and going on 2 (I can hardly believe Jack will be 4 and James will be 2), and a house we are still trying to remodel, slowly.

Waters has no microwave in her kitchen. (She made breakfast in her own home kitchen for Leslie Stahl during the 60 Minutes piece).  Nothing is frozen. Everything is from a farmer's market.

While I think this is great, and perhaps this as my ultimate goal, the way she does things is incompatible with my life right now.  But that doesn't mean I can't be inspired by her way of living, her philosophy and her dream. That doesn't mean I can't apply the things I can apply now, and add more in as I go along.

So step one is making a garden with my two boys this summer. And I'm thinking one of the set of crops I want to make sure we have is tomatoes, peppers and cilantro -- a salsa garden.

Comments

[magpie]

I bought peas to plant with my daughter - given that it's the one vegetable she'll eat consistently, I hope she likes pulling them off the vine!

[Aurelia]

You can do little bits here and there. Add a veggie, grow something small to start, and bit by bit, you will do it.

And no, I wouldn't trash the microwave just yet! ;)

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And I remember back at our old Montessori daycare in California that part of the program for the children was gardening and growing food, and then participating in the preparation of the food, and then eating it. I loved that.