Marshall Chrostowski at the Pacifica Graduate Institute

By Janice Cook Knight

Photography by Erin Feinblatt

In my wildest fantasy, school grounds would be beautiful, nurturing places for students to learn and for teachers to facilitate that learning. What would it be like if campuses, where adults and especially children spend so much time, were surrounded by lush plant life, some of it edible? 

The elementary school I attended in the San Fernando Valley was an “asphalt jungle,” with few trees, minimal landscaping and a tiny garden plot out in back of a bungalow where second-graders could experiment with growing vegetables. This was many years ago, but unfortunately those school grounds haven’t changed much since, and similar schools are the norm in most of the country. 

Thankfully, in our area many schools are adding edible gardens to educate students about food production and healthy eating. Often, though, the rest of the on-campus landscaping is not remarkable. Students can be hard on landscaping, so the reasoning goes that plants on many school campuses have to be tough. Many college landscapes are not much better.

The Pacifica Graduate Institute presents a far different model. At its 12-acre Lambert campus in Carpinteria (a second campus is located on Ladera Lane, in Montecito), a core group of buildings is surrounded by a seven-acre “greenbelt.” It consists of two acres of row crops, a 3-acre lemon grove, a stone- and pome-fruit orchard, native gardens with riparian wildlife corridor, Mediterranean gardens, an Australian woodland, a South African garden and a small redwood grove that acts as a windbreak for the row crops. 

This campus was once the home of the Chumash native  people. In the 20th century, Max Fleischmann, heir to the Fleischmann yeast fortune, built Edgewood Ranch on this site, which once included 1,200 acres of agriculture and fruit trees. Some of those original buildings are still a part of the campus. 

In July I did a walkabout at the campus gardens with Marshall Chrostowski, the gardener of record at the Pacifica Graduate Institute since 1989, and since 2000 the garden designer as well. He was trained as a plant ecologist, ethno-botanist and soil scientist and practiced as a tropical ecologist, bio-geographer and ethno-botanist. He studied at Dartmouth, Rutgers and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before moving to California.

This was my second tour, having visited last year during a tour sponsored by the local chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers. I’d heard that Marshall was growing grains at this property and was curious about what grains could be grown in the Santa Barbara area.

We begin the tour at Pacifica’s diverse vegetable and fruit garden, accented with towering dahlias and red amaranth plants, and in one corner what looks like the biggest “sunflower” plant I’ve ever seen. Actually, it’s a perennial species of Tithonia from Mexico, and the yellow flowers smell like—mmm—chocolate, though it’s not edible. 

There are rows of kale, heirloom Kwintus beans (like a Romano bean), squashes, lettuce, eggplant, collards and artichokes. A few fruit trees are here as well, including a delicious Pettingill apple, although I know from my previous visit that most of the fruit trees are located some distance away in a separate orchard area. Marshall consults with an assistant who is preparing a box of produce for a customer, a local monastery. In the packing area a huge box of elephant garlic, the biggest bulbs I’ve ever seen, are drying. “Drying shrinks the bulbs and concentrates the flavor,” Marshall says. 

What many people probably don’t realize is that Pacifica’s garden produce is for sale. Students and staff comprise about half of their regular customers, and the rest is available to the community at large. The produce can be delivered; available produce is posted on the garden’s website each week, and customers choose items and place their orders in advance. Excess produce is donated to Foodbank of Santa Barbara County and other outlets for those in need. 

Pacifica is hosting a Foodbank event in October, and Marshall is planting to prepare for it. The garden must provide most of the produce for an event that will feed 150 people. The area where the primary vegetable garden is planted was not always prime growing land. In fact this spot once was covered with a driveway, a parking lot and some buildings, and underneath much of it there is still road base. It was easier to layer soil and compost on top of it, effectively turning the whole area into one big raised bed, than to haul the road base away. To this end, in a separate area of the garden compost is being made from garden waste, and several large and productive compost heaps are in various stages of decomposition; when they are finished, the compost goes back to fertilize the garden.

Marshall is a conservator of ancient grains and fava beans. Eight-foot-tall red amaranth is sprinkled throughout the growing area. Marshall grows it mostly for birds and other wildlife—it’s a unique variety that has adapted to his particular location, a cross between several varieties he’s grown there. He’s grown a variety of quinoas, and several kinds of Tibetan and Indian barleys, though only the amaranth and sweet corn were planted when I visited. “

These plants preceded wheat in human usage,” Marshall tells me. “In Asia there are a lot of ‘naked grains,’ grains that grow without a husk. Having a husk makes grains difficult to process,” but these naked grains are much easier for the backyard gardener. “This is a good barley-growing area.” Who knew? 

Amaranth, I learned, besides being grown for its seeds, has tasty leaves. “The seeds can be popped, like tiny popcorn,” Marshall says. As he speaks I remember eating sweets in Mexico made of popped amaranth kernels and honey; at the time I wondered why I’d never seen them in the United States.  

So many foods, Marshall laments, are available in the world, but we limit ourselves to just a few. He tells me about yacon, a nutritious and tasty root vegetable he grows that is harvested in the fall. It’s native to the Andes, and most North Americans aren’t yet familiar with it. He also grows cardoons, a relative of the artichoke (the stems are eaten, not the flower), another uncommon but delicious crop from the Mediterranean region.

Marshall gave up the academic life to design and work in farms and gardens, but brings all of his knowledge of geology and geography to his current work. During the tour he points out geological land features that affect the growing conditions. He is both farmer and horticulturist as well as geologist and geographer. 

“At some point I decided I wanted to be my grandmother,” Marshall tells me. “A Polish peasant, she didn’t speak English, though she could read and write Polish. This is my grandmother’s farm in New Hampshire—I’m just repeating what she did, except this is a demonstration farm. She used to drive us crazy making us work in the fields.” Marshall says his grandmother grew mainly potatoes and pickle cucumbers for the family restaurant and bakery, called, coincidentally, Marshall’s Market. 

During the 20-plus years that Marshall has been there, the grounds at Pacifica have been transformed from much open space to thoughtful groups of plantings rich in texture, color and diversity. In designing this landscape, originally more formal plantings were envisioned, such as might be found at Oxford University or other more typical campuses.

This was not what Marshall had in mind. “Pacifica is a depth psychology, mythology, humanity-oriented institution, trying to walk the talk of sustainability. Jungians say you feed the soul; I’m saying we need to feed the body,” Marshall explains. “Part of feeding the body is the actual physical presence of the gardens in all their lushness and diversity, edible perennials along one side for people, birds, animals. It’s the Permaculture principle.”

Besides the many garden spaces, Marshall recently created a natural-looking grotto complete with a beautiful fountain and plants in soft colors: pinks and lavenders. This grotto and a nearby grove of gingko trees were designed per the request of former students. Part of Pacifica’s mission, and Marshall’s as its garden designer, is to respond to student needs. 

Though already serene and beautiful, over time the plants at the grotto will arch over the sandstone boulders, creating a sacred and sheltered spot for students to visit. “The grotto is a crowning achievement because it was a hard thing to build,” Marshall tells me. “The boulders were carefully placed.” Huge sandstone boulders were moved here from another part of the property that was undergoing construction.

We notice a box of Kleenex at the grotto; students who are studying psychology at this level experience wells of their own deep feelings. This is just what this landscape has been designed for: It offers solace. 

That dream of a school environment that nurtures students? Turns out it’s already a reality, and in our own community. Perhaps the existence of this garden will inspire others, and even spread to include campuses where young students can thrive and explore. Janice Cook Knight is the author of two cookbooks for the Follow Your Heart Restaurant in Canoga Park, California. She writes, teaches cooking, facilitates a cookbook-writing workshop and lectures on Julia Child. Janice lives in Santa Barbara with her family, chickens and cat and loves to garden and experiment in the kitchen.

Growing Grains in Your Home Garden

by Marshall Chrostowski

Some people may want to experiment with growing grains in their home garden. Here are some of my findings.

All the grain types are suitable for growing in Santa Barbara, but I would recommend passing up rye, tritiale, oats (bird predation problems), teff, quinoa (long season and hates humidity and, at ripening, any rainfall). The millets are beautiful but likely would require extra effort to harvest, thresh and cook.

Small patches of, say, 50 square feet will yield enough to process and taste the variety. Some of the grains grow very tall and arch outward while others stay compact and tidy. Most of the barleys are well-behaved, as are the spelt and einkorn and even the emmer wheats. Kamut and Sonoran and durum wheats generally tend to be hoggers of space.

Sorghums are wonderful in the landscape, self-fertile and useful as food and ornaments. Seeds are large, the sap of the syrup types is tasty.

Naked wheats and barleys (hull-less varieties) are easily threshed and they are very pretty in the landscape. The ancient varieties of wheats do not thresh clean but are beautiful in the landscape and can be milled for cereals and pastries.

The most drought resistant are the sorghums and pearl millet; the latter having large whitish seeds of excellent flavor and milling properties. Barleys are likely more tolerant of drought than most modern wheats; some of the barleys of India and Tibet are reputed to be very drought tolerant.

Winter/Spring Grains:

Wheats (mostly planted in spring):

Sonoran, Club, Durum, Polish/Astrakhan, Kamut (pastry and pasta types)

Spelt, red and some white wheats (leavened baked goods)

Einkorn (hulled types along with spelt and emmer: more ancient wheat varieties)

Barleys (spring planted), source: Kusa Seed Research Foundation

Naked varieties, mostly from Tibet and South Asia (six-row types mostly), many named varieties.

Two-row (and some six-row types) used for malting and animal feeds

Oats (winter or early spring planted):

Mostly feed varieties but seed catalogs carry named varieties. Much hardier as overwintering crop.

Rye and triticale (rye/wheat cross) (winter plant)

Grain rye varieties are available as are triticale varieties, very hardy, the latter types with

big straw.

Summer Grains 
(seeded in warming soils of springtime):

Corn/maize (choose varieties adapted to our latitude):

Sweet corn, normal sweet to supersweet

Dent corn, different varieties for grinding flour, making tortillas, making hominy and baking: Hickory King, Blue Claridge.

Flint corn, typical North American native varieties for parching and grinding.

Popcorn, a type of flint corn with many varietal selections.

Sorghums (among the most drought-resistant grains)

Grain types typically have white or light-colored seed: Dale variety, multiple-use.

Syrup types, especially Mennonite, Black Amber and Iowa Sweet.

Broom types have “sprays” with red or black seeds, these deseeded stems can be bound to make brooms.

Forage sorghums make great displays, animal feed and useful compost ingredient.

Millets (often drought-resistant, especially Pearl millet):

Among the oldest grains domesticated in tropics and subtropics and includes numerous species

Foxtail millet for bird seed

Pearl millet, common millet and African finger millet for human and animal food

Teff (ancient traditional grain of Ethiopia)

Grain-like Plant Types:

Amaranth

New World species grown for seed, best the white-seeded types, popped or cooked

Varieties: Golden, Chinese Giant Orange, Burgundy

Old World species grown for leaves eaten as “spinach” (young leaves of all species are edible.)

Quinoa

Sacred grain of the Inca and other Andean peoples, many varieties, few adapted to our coastal location: Faro, Temuco, Rainbow/Colorado do well here

Good resource books for the backyard grain farmer:

Homegrown Whole Grains: Grow, Harvest and Cook Wheat, Barley, Oats, Rice, Corn and More by Sara Pitzer (Storey Publishing, 2009)

Small-Scale Grain Raising by Gene Logsdon (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009)

Resources

You can purchase seasonal produce from “Marshall’s Market.” The order form and more information is available atPacifica.edu/The_Garden_Order_Form.aspx

The gardens at Pacifica Institute are also available for group tours. Call 805 687-7109 or email Marshall at mcfarm@silcom.com; Pacifica.edu

Jane Lindsey at 805 967-5741 x101; jlindsey@foodbanksbc.org.