spreading the seed

Nature is wide awake and bursting out with millions of flowers. The carpets of snowdrops and purple crocuses have made way for the striking colors of narcissus and tuilips. The trees and bushes are also exploding, from the delicate puffs of cherry blossoms to the full sensuality of lush magnolias. Even the three little bushes under our balcony have tender shiny new leaves like lime green baby teeth. The world is ready to display its aliveness. I was feeling so elated, reveling in the wonders of the higher power of nature and her regenerative force. And then the “gardening” company came and sprayed the whole area with herbicides to ease their work and keep this place looking humanly controlled.

I went into anger and despair thinking of the lack of control we have over our urban environment which in this part of the city is quite grey. That is how we decided to get into action and turn our balcony into a clandestine workshop. We sat on overturned pots, watching the doves pick holes into the slices of white bread someone threw out a window above, while we rolled soft little balls of clay and compost between our palms. It was a therapeutic and contemplative experience, the soft aliveness of moist clay between the fingers, spiked with a dash of naughtiness. In about an hour we had an arsenal of about 125 seed bombs, or greenades, packed with a blast of medicinal herbs, pumpkin, and butterfly mix.

This is an act of guerrilla gardening, the illicit cultivation of public spaces that are otherwise barren or neglected. Click here for instructions on how to make your own bombs.

Seed bombs are based on the Nendo Dango cultivating method, invented by Masanobu Fukuoka, a Taoist Japanese farmer, who experimented for more than 60 years on a natural, spiritual approach to growing food. In his mid twenties he had a revelation while watching the sun rise over Yokohama Bay, he realized that everything is already perfect in nature, it is just a matter of working harmoniously with it, entering its rhythm, so he devoted his life to do this through decades of careful experimentation on his land. "Natural farming is not just for growing crops”, He would say “it is for the cultivation and perfection of human beings.".

Fukuoka’s Natural Gardening philosophy consists in not disturbing the soil, limiting human manipulation. A precursor and inspirer of permaculture he put the emphasis on a deep observation of the workings of nature works to be able to include edible crops in natural ecosystems.

In his method there is no tilling or breaking of the soil, and this is where the seedballs come in, instead of planting them in the earth he created a system of using balls of clay to place the seeds in the open while keeping them safe from animals until the rains. He would not decide where to place vegetables, he would just throw the seeds around and observe where each variety thrived, he let them choose, and then let some stay there so they could re seed. He would not weed either, he would control weeds with a ground cover of white clover which also acts as a fertilizer as it fixes nitrogen to the soil.

The result of his efforts, as can be seen in his land on the Island of Shikoku, is an extremely efficient system that doesn’t require much human labor, fossil fuels, or chemicals and whose yields are comparable with those of modern farms in Japan.

The nendo dango method is also very efficient for reforestation, which has been done on a big scale using a cement mixer to make several tons of clay seedballs. I can imagine that kids would also be very good at it and have loads of fun.

The seedballs where also adopted by guerrilla gardeners as they make good projectiles for launching seeds to places beyond the reach of a trowel or where it is just not allowed. This is exactly what we are going to do, we are planning a flower attack, I can’t tell you where of course … It will be a secret until the next rainfall

Her majesty, The Tulip

It is spring, so after spending so much time in Holland I finally went for the ultimate Dutch experience: The tulips. Keukenhof is a disneyland of flowers. It’s an atraction park built around the idea of a "perfect" garden, meaning explosive colors, velvety carpets of grass, manicured flower beds and not one weed in sight. Being a gardener myself, I know this is not easily achieved, so I couldn't help thinking how much herbicide must go into the soil and how toxic it must be. Not surprisingly there aren’t many insects around, which seems quite suspicious considering the obscene amount of flowers in full bloom. Mind you, there are no wilted flowers either, any plant that has finished its flowering cycle is promptly removed from view. This is the least sustainable garden one can ever imagine.

Don’t get me wrong. It is stunning and beautiful, a really enjoyable experience. It’s just that being there raised quite some issues for me. Seeing all these magnificent creatures that have resulted from human manipulation and the way they are arranged, an order that has nothing to do with nature and a lot with human aesthetics was disturbing. On one hand it made me think of the endless human desire for control, but also of how the paradigm of what is a garden has changed through history. Gardens used to be places where we would grow our food, and play with flowers.


As Michael Pollan writes, grassy lawns were invented as a status symbol by tudor times aristocrats to set one thing straight "I am so rich, I don’t need to grow my food" and we just have been copying that model. Sadly, today, most people in the western world will never know what it feels like to eat something that they have grown.

The garden for me has always been a place where I could enjoy playing with nature, trying my best to harness my controlling impulse, to really engage in an interactive, joyful relationship. A game that always ends with the realization that She will always do it better and prettier. When I walk in the mountains in Tepoztlan I am always amazed at how any little patch of wild growth can look just perfect to me. And it is something I could never imitate.

It seems to me that Nature has the most refined sense of aesthetics one could ever attain. It is delicate, it is powerful, and yet it manages to maintain a perfect balance. It is also playful, I was reminded of that while watching a white peacock in the gardens. Why if not, would She bestow him with that cute little crown. His entire being is proof that there are reasons well beyond functionality in Natures creation like fun and sheer pleasure.

The tulips are amazing though, and I can see in its blazing petals and elegant stem the reason for the dutch passion that reached at a certain point a level of madness, like the fact that the possession of a certain bulb was enough to purchase a canal side house. And that brings me back to Michael Pollan, who devotes to this flower, a chapter in his book The Botany of Desire. In this book, he proposes the idea that, maybe, plants are playing on our desires and thus using us to ensure their propagation. The Tulip made people fall in love with it, and so, it is now an extremely successful plant. She made them feed her reproduce her, hybridize her, and shift her shape into the most amazing varieties. She made the dutch people devote her an entire attraction park, so millions of visitors each year can admire her radiant grace.

I do recommend a visit to Keukenhof, but also Michael Pollan's, Second Nature, an insightful, honest and funny view of his experience with gardening.

I want to share with you an amazing talk Michael Pollan gave on Ted, called A plant's eye view.

and a sea of spring flowers...