Alan Chadwick

Paul Lee introduces Alan Chadwick to Richard Baker (from Alan Chadwick, a Gardener of Souls)

from Wind Bell summer 1983

Machine generated alternative text:
ALAN CHADWICK
Alan Chadwick returned to Green Gulch
in of 1979, seven years after he
first established our gardens here. He was
too ill to work any longer in the garden
itself, but he was able to give small classes
and lectures, several times a week, and
talk to individuals.
During this time he asked o•roshi to
be his heir and literary executor and to see
to it that his few possessions were passed
on appropriately. He asked that his per-
sonal library bc kept at Green Gulch and
become the basis of a horticultural
library. He also asked that Baker-roshi
take initial responsibility for establishing a
horticultural society to continue his work
and teaching. He wanted this society also
to help maintain gardens where training
of his apprentices could continued.
Before Alan died he met with many of his
enior apprentices, with Baker-roshi, and
other students and friends. At this meet-
ing the bxsic form of the Alan Chadwick
Society was worked out. The Society is
now incorporated and working on sev-
eral projects: collecting the Alan Chad-
wick Archives to housed at Green
Gulch with his library, establishing the
Alan Chadwick
21

Machine generated alternative text:
Consecration rhe Alan
Chadwick Memorial Stone:
L: Father Michel Culllgan,
R: Baker-roshi
Gardeners' Guild, a network of apprentices and students of horticulture, collecting his
teaching on cassette tapes so they may one day be released and/or transcribed and
published.
Alan Chadwick died at Green Gulch on Pentecost Sunday, May 25, 1980 Just before he
died, he set up on a small altar to the left of his bed a print or Raphael's Madonna and
Child Enthroned with Saints, and on the wall to the right of his bed fif-
teenth sonnet. Then he died calmly in his own time and consideration. Kathleen Acacia
Downs, his devoted helper, was with him all through the morning and was joined by
Baker-Toshi at the last. For the next forty-eight hours friends and apprentices joined him
at his bedside — speaking to him, reading psalms, sitting.
22

Katharine Cook writes in her Florales Ludi: Festival of Flowers and Games

The irresistible invitation into a rooted culture, however, came through seeing a summer tomato planting at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center led by a student of Alan Chadwick, a master horticulturist who is widely credited with founding the organic farming and gardening movement in California. A visit to Alan’s teaching garden at the University of California, Santa Cruz followed, revealing the most beautiful sight I had ever seen; that the garden was also growing delicious, healthful food, flowers and herbs—all biodynamically—doubled the impact.

I moved to Green Gulch to study with Alan. A total novice, I tentatively began a relationship to the earth herself. I learned to grow plants, harvest vegetables, work in silence. The garden eventually allowed me to touch my own humanity and that of others. Each day alone on the fields, my koan was, ‘What is the role of man in Nature?’