January 31, 2011
Open Days Gardener Profile: Sylvia Davatz in Hartland, Vermont
    
 

by Stephanie Werskey


Editor’s note: This is the first of what we hope will become a series profiling some of the many talented garden hosts and other volunteers whose generosity in opening their gardens to the public makes the Open Days program possible.


When asked by a visitor if she’d like to try an unknown variety of seed in her Vermont garden, Sylvia Davatz answered with an enthusiastic “I’ll try anything!” I saw this enthusiasm for gardening everywhere during my visit to Sylvia’s garden during an Open Day last June. Sylvia is growing a lot of unusual plants in her Zone 4 plot, including peanuts, wheat varieties from faraway countries, and scorzonera, a European root vegetable. Her passion for seed saving and the local food movement led her to start Solstice Seeds, a mail-order company offering heirloom, open-pollinated, vegetable seeds suitable for growing in Vermont’s Upper Valley region. Visitors to her garden that day peppered her with questions. They were clearly enamored by the abundance of the garden, the practical yet beautiful stone walls, and the gardener herself. She generously shared some of her knowledge with me, and described what drives her as a gardener.
 
    
 
Who or what are your gardening influences?
As a child, I read Swiss Family Robinson and was entranced by the concept of self-sufficiency, of going into some form of wilderness and creating a life from whatever resources were available.

 

Additionally, I derive a deep satisfaction from understanding the activities that support the most elemental aspects of our daily lives, and the implications of acquiring the skills to provide those for ourselves. Growing my own food, and by extension growing the seeds from which it comes, cultivates in me a reverence for the soil and binds me to my home landscape.


My great aunt Esther was a strong gardening influence. She had a deep knowledge of vegetable gardening, but also of medicinal herbs and natural remedies. Her hands looked like one-hundred-year-old apple tree branches. I wish I had paid better attention to her reservoir of experience while there was time.

 
    
 
At what point did you feel like a real or successful gardener?
One of the reasons we garden is because the work and learning are never done, and because it is impossible to garden without constantly being brought “back down to earth” with a sense of humility about our partnership with nature. I feel that I am a dedicated gardener, and very real in that sense, but that one year's success is another year's failure and that there is never really a feeling of having "arrived" at some specific point of expertise. Every year I'm grateful for the bounty, I try not to have too rigid expectations, and to learn from the serendipities of each season.

 

Among historic and contemporary gardeners, whose work you admire?
One of my favorite garden designers was Gertrude Jekyll. I find it fascinating that her failing eyesight informed the impressionistic cottage style of planting which she pioneered. Among contemporary gardeners, my heroes are the ones who are quietly, but with passion and dedication, doing the work of preserving our vegetable seed heritage. There's not a lot of glamour in this pursuit, but what could be more important?
 
    
 

How do you enjoy your garden and
what activities take place in it?
The main activities that take place in my garden are growing food for the winter months and seed for the seed catalogue. There is little in this work that I don't enjoy. Planting is an act of faith in the future. Weeding is quiet, contemplative work that results in beauty and that is "life-support" for the crops. Harvesting promises sustenance in cold times and seed for the coming year. At the end of the day I love sitting at the stone table, looking down over the beds, reflecting on the day's accomplishments.


What are your favorite local sources for plants and supplies?
My favorite plant and seed sources are my friends, and my favorite supply source is my neighbor from whom I get manure!


But on further reflection, I think my biggest gardening challenge is finding time to pursue all the variety trials and experiments I would like to. The temptation to try yet another tomato or melon, to find the onion with the best keeping qualities and flavor, to grow another dizzyingly beautiful bean, always leaves me yearning for more time or gardening space. So I suppose one of the many life lessons gardening teaches us is the inevitability of limits and the importance of reconciling runaway curiosity with a finite number of hours and square feet!

 
    
 
What did you enjoy most
about participating in the
Open Days program?
Gardening in my corner of the world is generally a solitary activity. So it was wonderful to have the garden filled with people, all strolling in a most relaxed fashion, taking in the personality of every plant, absorbed in and understanding what the garden is all about, full of questions. One of the most satisfying aspects of the day was seeing how interested visitors were in the vegetables. This is a noticeable change from just a few years ago. Our cultural focus is shifting perceptibly toward food production.
 
    
 
Of course I worked like a demented person to make every leaf and flower perfect. I joked to friends that I wanted to create the illusion that (a) this is how it looked all the time and that (b) there was no work involved! Nobody was fooled!

 

What winter activities do you participate in to tide you over until the gardening season?
With the starting up of the seed catalogue, there is no longer down-time in the cold months! From around September, every available surface in my downstairs is covered with containers of seed waiting to be threshed, cleaned, recorded, and stored. Once this is done I can begin to plan the next season's garden and compose the new catalogue. Then suddenly it's time to start filling seed orders, which occupies me happily from January until around April. Recordkeeping, yield calculation and giving seed-saving workshops fill any remaining available hours.

 

Solstice_Seeds_Catalogue_2011_masthead 

Solstice Seeds Catalogue
One of Sylvia Davatz’s objectives in compiling and publishing the Solstice Seeds Catalogue is to encourage cultivation of varieties and seeds that are specifically adapted to her immediate geographic area in the Upper Valley in Vermont. The 2011 catalogue, the third annual edition, was completed at year end; to request an electronic copy, contact Sylvia at sdav@valley.net. However, seed quantities are very limited. Sylvia encourages gardeners to seek out seed sources close to their home, or to patronize companies in their region, for suitable varieties and best results.