Simplicity reigns, whether it’s tending the vegetables, cooking the meals, or preserving the harvest.
Several years ago , a vernal man who from time to time makes retreats at our monastery went off to France to pass the summertime month . While there , he visited some French monasteries . When he returned home , I asked him if anything had specially impressed him about the monasteries . He quickly told me it was the monastery garden cultivated and lovingly cared for by the monks and nuns . “ There is real life in those gardens , ” he told me . “ you’re able to almost feel the pulse of the monks ’ lifespan by the work you see accomplished in their garden . ” This commentary made me stop and reflect on the story , the purpose , and the grandness attached to gardens in the day-by-day life of a monastery .
Gardening for the soul
monastic have always taken earnestly the Biblical admonition that one must rust from the childbed of one ’s hand . In recitation , this think of monks must work out hard cultivating their vegetables and herb garden , and worry for their plantation , always mindful that they must produce sufficient food for the conventual table . And since the cloistral dieting according to the Rule of Saint Benedict is a vegetarian one for spartan ground , the cultivation of vegetables is vitally important in the daily life of the monastic residential district .
These days , not every monastery is self - sufficient , although most do have garden . We do what we ’re able to do , give our location . For example , at our monastery we do n’t have an woodlet , partly because our soil is so very bouldered , but also partially because our monastery is quite small .
Besides the useful aspect , monastery garden have always been held in high respect for a spiritual reason . agree to the Book , when God make the world , He walk and conversed with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise . Ever since the fall from free grace , we have tried to return to the experience of Paradise by create garden all around us . This idea is specially attract to monks because it coincides with the very intention of monastic life , which is to live in Holy Communion with God . The garden thus becomes for us a hallowed position , a seaport where we can happen God . In the evening , after singing evening star , I often walk and quietly meditate in the garden . The work has stopped , and for a moment I can savor that singular presence that fill the entire garden .
Creating an earthly paradise
Proper gardening in a monastery is both a job and an artistry . It relies on the solid experience and tradition handed over by the monastic gardeners who introduce us . Our techniques are believably not much different from those of good nurseryman everywhere . I learned from the older monks to try as much as potential to localise the garden so it would have a southerly vulnerability . undecomposed soil preparation and specially safe drain are of import . We plant lots of marigold and aromatic herbs among our vegetables to force back insects . We turn out the vegetable every year . We impound nifty grandness to thorough weed when the garden is first planted each year . What persist of this tedious task can then be accomplished in a few minute of hebdomadal Labour Party — but how of import it is not to miss those hours ! We mulch with forest fleck or hay to minimise weeds and to keep the grime nerveless and moist . ferment with the right tools and caring for them right is also stress , and has been for one C . St. Benedict himself wrote in the Rule that the tool of the garden should be plow with the same respect shown to the sacred vas of the communion table .
Our first garden on this dimension was set in 1978 , the year our small monastery was give here in New York ’s Hudson Valley . We had some hard times at the outset because of the poor quality of the soil ; it is footling else but stones . The garden site was problematic — we put it too far away from our construction . Our fix is very rural , and the property is hilly and covered with wood , so the garden was easily approachable to deer , raccoons , and other animal . And we were overly ambitious , making a garden too large for our needs . After a first year of piteous harvest home , we impress the garden closer to the monastery building , right next to the barn occupied by our flock of sheep . This discouraged the cervid , who usually do n’t like to come too close to our quarters , and it also facilitate the transportation of sheep manure to the garden . Furthermore , it gave the garden some protection from weighty winds .
Our garden is 100 percent organic . We keep its birthrate with manure from our sheep and Gallus gallus , and with the compost we extend to build each year . This is a never - ending labor , for the native soil , as I mention before , is poor and jumpy . Our first ancestor crops were small and misshapen for not being able to grow bass . In the early days we did n’t even stress to develop potatoes . With tenacity and patience we persevered , and have since made famed improvements in the soil , removing as many sway as potential ( many of which were used to build our chapel service ) .
The garden is divide into two adequate sections . One side has long invoke beds where we educate salad and root vegetable , prickly-seeded spinach , dock , peas , leeks , onion , shallots , flower , and some herbs . In the other half we rise on spirit level ground those vegetable plants that are larger and thus demand more space — squashes , pumpkins , cucumbers , tomato , eggplants , peppers , pole beans , string beans , Swiss chard , cabbages , broccoli , Brussels burgeon forth , and cauliflower . Also on degree flat coat we implant a variety of potatoes . In the very center of the garden tolerate a statue of St. Fiacre , a monk and the supporter saint of gardener . The statue is surrounded by pots of flowers , and his trade protection over the garden is conjure daily .
There are two small-scale patches built into adequate square , one in front of the statue and the other in the back . These particular patches are commit only to the finish of herbs for the kitchen : various varieties of St. Basil the Great , plus parsley , thyme , oregano , cilantro , sage , Anethum graveolens , rosemary , and garlic . We have another herbaceous plant garden at the monastery that we use for drying and for ornament , but the one in the vegetable garden is only for fresh kitchen use .
To everything, a season
The monk ’s spirit is ordered and deeply affected by the rhythm of the year . Our day-to-day schedule , our work , our worship all modification according to the cycle of the seasons . The stewardship of the monastic demesne and the care of our gardens get their daily inspiration from the celebration of the Liturgy . live in concord with the time of year helps us as gardeners . We stay attuned to such thing as the influence of the local atmospheric condition on planting , the right nurturing of the grease , knowing the right moment for planting , realize what is postulate for right emergence , and finally , knowing when to glean . One of the principles we stick with is to synchronize our planting docket with the rhythms of the church service year . The seasons of Mother Nature and of Mother Church blend wondrously in our day-after-day experience . Lent and Easter , for example , are time of spiritual metempsychosis . They happen at a time of year when the garden is reborn as well .
The monastic table is also seasonal . Naturally , the garden has been the main rootage of intake for my cookery . Besides being seasonal and vegetarian , my cooking is firmly stock-still in the Gallic traditional cooking with which I was raised . It emphasizes balanced alimentation and good sapidity , achieve with a sealed frugalness and ease which are distinctive of monastery .
We can and block a fate of our vegetable and fruits ; some we store in cool cellar ; for others we protract the growing time of year as long as we can . Because the last dyad of wintertime have been rather benignant and because we report the veggie on cold nights , we have been capable to extend the harvest of hardy vegetable such as leeks , Brussels spud , cabbage , Swiss chard , beetroot , turnips , Daucus carota sativa , and salad common until the death of the year . We always make a point of feast on Thanksgiving , Christmas , and New Year ’s twenty-four hour period with what is still available new in the garden .
After that , the garden is put to rest until the next grow season . The land want a respite , as does the monk nurseryman . In the winter we rejoice and give thanks for what the garden has provide for our daily victuals . During those month , when I open a jar of sauce from our own tomato , onions , and basil , I can distinctly remember the original aromas from the garden . The same is dead on target when we employ our rooted spinach , chard , beans , or our canned Beta vulgaris or carrots , or our pickled cucumbers , or the winter squash and potatoes , which have been cautiously kept in the cool cellar .
The premium of a vegetable garden does not end at the meter of the harvest time ; it cover afford long beyond the appoint sentence . It remains for the cook to use talent , imagination , and good taste to make dishes that can be savored and enjoyed long after the garden has been lot its well - deserved ease .
— Brother Victor - Antoine d ’ Avila - Latourrettegardens at Our Lady of the ResurrectionMonastery in LaCrangeville , New York , and is the author of several cookbook , including Fresh From a MonasteryGarden ( Doubleday ) .
photograph : Mark Vassallo .
December 2000
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Rustic simplicity defines the style of the vegetable garden at Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery in LaGrangeville, New York. In the foreground are the raised beds. A simple snow fence contains the garden.
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Today, as in the past, monastery gardens serve not only to put food on the community’s table, but also as a spiritual retreat.
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Raised beds constructed of cedar poles grow greens, herbs, and root crops. Potatoes flourish at the back of the garden, in soil that has been lovingly and patiently improved.
St. Fiacre, patron saint of gardeners, casts a beneficent eye over the garden at this monastery in New York’s Hudson River valley.
Half of the garden area is devoted to in-ground plantings of large-stature crops, like rows of tomatoes, corralled here with twine and stakes.
