Tomato Royale

Prince Jardinier - Le Cedre Rouge
Email: vpc@lecedrerouge.com
www.princejardinier.fr

Located in the Eastern Townships of Quebec on what was once a farm, her garden is surrounded by an eight foot fence to prevent it from becoming a deer cafeteria. Runner beans, red, pink and white, twine up the gate and cover the high fence. Wrought iron gates found imbedded in the grass next to the barn were repaired, and painted a vivid red. Four tall cedar shrubs were recently planted in front of the fence, to read as green posts when all the other colours are taken by the frost. Gwynne made the wooden sign that hangs above the gate. It reads “FESTINA LENTE,” a Latin proverb meaning “Make haste slowly.” It is both the name of the garden and its creator’s philosophical stance. “There is so much I want to do here, inside the garden and out. I have to try and be measured and not bite off more than I can chew. But that’s easier said than done.” In 2005, the garden space was doubled and an orchard of heirloom fruit trees is in the works.

This is a garden created with an artist’s eye for shape and colour. Gwynne remembers a visitor, a man she didn’t actually know very well. “When he walked into the garden he turned to me and said, ‘Oh. I didn’t know you were an artist.’ And I just thought, ‘Yes!’”

It is, however, the tomato that has won her heart and holds centre stage in Gwynne’s garden. But not just any tomato. These are heirloom tomatoes, old fashioned varieties that have been lovingly grown and handed down for generations, in some cases, even centuries. Gwynne shares her love of these beauties each spring when she grows and sells heirloom seedlings through her company TOMATOES etc. “I have a friend who refers to it as more of an eccentricity than an enterprise, but it has been growing year by year.”

Gwynne began the business six years ago. It satisfies both her need to be a farmer, if only a seedling farmer, and her desire to contribute actively to the conservation of biodiversity through encouraging people to grow heirloom and endangered varieties.

The more than fifty varieties of tomato seedlings and other vegetables, herbs and flowers that TOMATOES etc. sells are all open pollinated, (non-hybrid) heirloom varieties, that are guaranteed to be grown from non-genetically modified, mostly organic seeds. No chemical fertilizer or pesticides are used to produce the seedlings.

Her website lists several convincing reasons to select a heritage variety:

- TASTE: The old varieties were developed at a time when great flavour and texture was more important than the ability to withstand mechanical harvesting and shipping over long distances.

- PRESERVING GENETIC DIVERSITY: Every year commercial seed houses eliminate more and more varieties from the seeds they offer their customers. This loss of genetic diversity has serious consequences for our future. Plant breeders need a wide variety of genetic material to be able to produce new strains that can resist the stresses of our changing climate.

- A CONNECTION TO THE PAST AND A PROMISE FOR THE FUTURE: Our ancestors have passed down to us an abundant agricultural heritage of fruits, vegetables, herbs and grains. These foods are delicious and beautiful and their lasting survival demonstrates their resistant to insects and diseases. By choosing to grow these heritage varieties you are also protecting this legacy for your children and grandchildren.

When Gwynne first started growing tomatoes, her family put up with the entire house becoming a potting shed and greenhouse. But after having to replacing the drywall in the basement due to moisture damage, and in need of much more space, she moved into a series of rented greenhouses. But the plan now is to add a greenhouse to the growing garden operation in Dunkin. It’s just question of “FESTINA LENTE.”

Le Château de la Bourdaisière - The Loire Valley, France

The Loire Valley (Val de Loire) is a lush, fertile valley with moderate climate. French kings and nobility began settling in the valley in the tenth century, attracting the very best landscape designers. Before long, and to this day, the valley of the Loire is known as the "Garden of France".

The origins of Le Château de la Bourdaisière date back to the 14th century, though it has been rebuilt and renovated many times since then. King François I arranged for construction of a new castle on the site in 1520; it was partially destroyed in 1775 by order of a powerful Minister who wished to use the stones of the castle in his own Pagoda. In 1802 a massive reconstruction was undertaken by Baron Joseph Angelier. It changed hands many more times, and after World War II, the castle became severely run down.

In 1991, Prince Louis Albert de Broglie’s brother, Prince Philippe Maurice, proposed they purchase the Château de la Bourdaisière to restore and set up as a hotel. Initially, Prince Louis Albert, a successful banker, had no intention of having more than a financial involvement in the project. But that changed rather quickly as he became more and more engaged in the restoration of the large and badly neglected garden on the one hundred and forty acre Château property. A trip to India brought his interest back to the tomato. “The tomatoes there were nothing like those being sold here,” he recalls. “First of all they looked so different from the too smooth, too shiny, too red and too identical French grocery store tomato. But most important their tomatoes actually tasted like something, like the tomatoes I remembered. I came home and started planting tomatoes. The first variety? It was a beefsteak called Erika of Australia. Avec un petit vin de Mont-Louis, c’était excellent!” The garden also hosts forty varieties of basil, a common companion plant to the tomato.

His interest grew and grew as did his collection. “I wanted to reintroduce this diversity to the public. Not all tomatoes are red and round!” Motivated by a strong commitment to preserving biodiversity in the food we eat, in 1998 Louis Albert went on to create the Conservatoire de la Tomate, considered to house the most important tomato collection in Europe with more than 650 varieties of heirloom tomato. “My idea was to put forward a different way of looking at things” he explains, “of traditions that we need to preserve - to defend for the future, for our children for our grandchildren. I wanted to go back to the source. We have documented over ten thousand different tomato varieties but most people have four or five available to them. After a long period of being so desensitized to what they are eating, I think people are becoming more conscious now and are beginning to demand changes. They are asking questions about what they eat. It took things like genetically modified food and Mad Cow Disease for them to realize that mistakes have been made. Here I am trying to make a contribution to that change.” Only organic fertilizers are permitted, and no sprays other than copper sulfate (also known as Bordeaux mixture) are used at the Château de la Bourdaisière.

The château doesn’t grow tomatoes to sell to the general public, but the Conservatoire de la Tomate, dedicated to promoting the cause of biodiversity, has a role as a place of research and exchange among scientists and commercial growers. It has, reports the Prince, “convinced some of the major producers to plant more heirloom varieties.”

Each September, the Conservatoire hosts an annual Festival de la Tomate, drawing over ten thousand people over the weekend. It is a celebration of food, wine, and tomatoes of every shape, size and colour under the sun. “People come from Paris, they come from all over, and from every occupation, whether bankers, industrialists or engineers, people who you wouldn’t think would have gardens and tomatoes as part of their day to day life. But it is important for them. Its food and its nutrition for them and their children. So it means that people are more concerned about these things, and if they are more concerned, it is exactly what I hope for.”

“There are more people interested, there are more cameras in the garden, there are more and more journalists that are interested. If you realize what you are losing, then you can change the face of the [future].”

Gwynne Basen
Gwynne Basen is a Gemini award-winning filmmaker, a writer and an activist, but it is gardening that is her passion, and in the last few years her garden has become the primary site where she expresses both her creativity and her commitment to the planet. “I can’t honestly say where this need to get my hands in the earth came from. I grew up in a house where all the plants were plastic! But I sure do know that I am the happiest when I am dirty.”

In 2000, after years of commuting to rented garden spaces, Gwynne and her husband Leopold finally bought an old farm in the beautiful Eastern Townships of Quebec, and Gwynne started her garden. The garden is a beautiful and delicious combination of food and flowers, mostly heritage varieties. But the great taste and unusual colours and shapes are only part of what motivates Gwynne to grow heirloom tomatoes and other vegetables. After years of making films about the new genetic technologies and watching their negative impact on agriculture, growing heirloom tomatoes has become more than a culinary and aesthetic indulgence, it has become a political act, a very personal gesture in the struggle to protect the biodiversity that is a vital part of our agricultural heritage. “To a certain extent we owe the genetic engineering industry a bit of a thanks because people have become so aware of what is happening, the risks that are out there now with our food crop, how it’s being manipulated. People are becoming more and more interested in what we’re doing as a counter to that.”

She is constantly on the lookout for rare old varieties to grow in her own garden and to offer the customers of TOMATOES etc., her gardening business that sells seedlings of heritage varieties of tomatoes and other vegetables, herbs and flowers. Besides providing her loyal customers with the possibility of growing plants that are both beautiful and delicious, it gives Gwynne the opportunity to spread the word about the grave risks we are facing in regard to future food security if we continue to lose the genetic diversity we have inherited.

As part of her commitment to change and education, Gwynne is an active board member of Seeds of Diversity, a national organisation committed to growing and preserving heritage and endangered seeds, and Action Communiterre, a Montreal based community organisation that supports urban agriculture and food security projects.

“It’s not the scale but the intent that matters. Whether you’re planting 650 heirloom tomatoes or just a few heritage or endangered vegetables in a pot on your balcony, you’re doing something good for yourself and for the earth.”

Prince Louis Albert de Broglie
Louis Albert de Broglie has inherited from his illustrious family the prestigious title of “Prince”, and a genealogical tree that includes marshals, writers, a ’President du Conseil’ (Prime Minister) and a Nobel Prize winner.

As a boy, he and his brother wanted frozen food, bored with the vast array of fresh vegetables that were the norm for his family. His father warned his boys that fresh natural foods would eventually be replaced by processed foods – an accurate prediction. “Very early I was made aware that something was disappearing in front of me, in front of us. When I came here to Bourdaisière, I started to plant things, and obviously in a kind of unconscious way, I was discovering that I was reviving something which was important.”

Louis Albert become a successful banker, but he had little hesitation in joining his brother in the purchase and restoration of Le Château de la Bourdaisière, a move that would change his life path completely. He took on the responsibility for the restoration of old garden, neglected for fifty years prior. “When you cultivate a garden, you get back in touch with the land, with your roots, and you rediscover the simple refined pleasures that make life so interesting.” For him, responsible stewardship of the planet is just another way of preserving the art de vivre that enhances our quality of life.

Over the years the Prince’s commitment to the garden expanded, as did the tomato collection. What also grew was Louis Albert’s personal commitment to agricultural biodiversity and the importance of preserving heirloom varieties. He brings the message of biodiversity and sustainability into every activity at the Château as well as his other endeavor, Le Prince Jardinier, a boutique that sells tomato seeds, and his line of quality garden tools and clothing sold internationally. “Through this garden I discovered something that is step by step leading me to put all my energy in making people aware of what the earth is giving us and what we could lose. Today’s news is bringing us back very quickly to what have we done to the planet and the tremendous changes that can occur in a week in some place like New Orleans or Asia. And this is the same story with biodiversity. Every day we know that there are about 200 species of animals and vegetables that are disappearing. By placing the Conservatoire here in this old walled garden, I’m trying to say look at the past and have an understanding of what the future will be.”

Louis Albert de Broglie has recently co-authored a comprehensive book on tomatoes with Domenica Guéroult, “Tomates d’hier and d’aujourd’hui” (Tomatoes of Yesterday and Today). Magnificently illustrated, this very beautiful work presents the “apple of love” under all its aspects: history, gardening recommendations, production, and recipes. Several old varieties, of all forms and all colors are described. (Photographs Marc Dantan - with the collaboration of Sonia Buchard, recipes by Patrick Ruh)

“Gardening is more than a country occupation: it is in effect an expression of the art of living. Today, La Bourdaisière gardens are regaining their ancient beauty. I am happy to see how many of our visitors from all parts of the world, who come to see the tomato collection, are amazed by the diversity of the gardens and are anxious that it should all be preserved.” The Prince continues to fulfill his mission to educate the public on the importance of biodiversity and sustainable development.

Recommended websites:
www.seeds.ca/ (Seeds of Diversity)
www.kokopelli-seeds.com
www.actioncommuniterre.qc.ca/english/about.html

Date: 2006
Length: 22 minutes