'Our Garden' Combines Hands-on Planting with History and Philosophy

To Seth Wyncott and Devon Dempsey, gardening is more than just putting seeds in soil. It’s about sowing the seeds of insight in the mind and heart.

Wyncott and Dempsey, self-described "garden geeks," are teaching an organic gardening class in Plainfield this summer that is a hybrid of agriculture, literature and environmental philosophy. "Our Garden" is geared towarded growing both veggies and “intimacy with the earth’s historians and storytellers,” Wyncott and Dempsey say in their class outline.

The program will combine planting organic crops on a plot near Plainfield Central High School with reading, reflection and discussion of the essays of Henry David Thoreau and the work of naturalists Michael Pollan and Richard Louv. Each class will teach about nature and the environment through “interacting with a vegetable garden” and applying concepts from American natural history and conservationist thought.

The class, which begins May 7 and runs through the end of August, lets participants spend the first hours getting their hands dirty before digging into some deep thinking about the relationship between people and plants. The first two classes will be at 9 a.m. on consecutive Saturdays before switching to an every other Saturday routine.

Wyncott and Dempsey will be probing profound questions about the roles of nature. Why should we foster biodiversity? How can nature survive the suburbs? What is our role as mediators between ultimate wild and ultimate control?

"Each of these questions shares a direct link with the process of organic gardening and ideas of balance,” Wyncott said. “We want to help people see and feel for themselves the strong effect of gardening that ties together the physical and mental experience.”

The $75 fee covers the cost of the plants and several texts. Pollan’s “Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education,” and “The Botany of Desire” analyze man’s quest for global domination. “The Portable Thoreau” introduces transcendentalism and serves as a portal to look at today’s concept of the wild. "Last Child in the Woods” by Louv helps gardeners learn about and overcome the “nature-student gap,” the pair say.

Students will keep all of the produce they grow, Wyncott said.

Wyncott and Dempsey, both in their 20s and Joliet residents, don’t mind being pegged as “garden geeks.” While his friends were playing football or building their motor monkey skills, Dempsey devoted his high school years to hoeing rows in the back yard. Wyncott spent his formative summers working beside parents and grandparents tending the family garden near Minooka.

“Gardening shaped both of us in ways that really helped us define who we are,” Dempsey said.

After taking a degree in management, Wyncott headed west to fight wildfires. When that grew tedious, he spent a year traveling through Asia and earned a master's degree in international conflict resolution and mediation from Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Dempsey studied water science at Northland College, an environmental liberal arts school in the northwoods of Wisconsin. This summer, he will be dividing his time between the “Our Garden” program and an internship at Montalbano Farms, an organic growing operation in New Lenox.

Besides delving into the questions that have plagued humankind since the beginning of time, the organic gardening course will teach people how to grow really good tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, onions, basil, eggplant, squash, peas, green beans and beets - all without using chemicals.

There will be lessons on “the three sisters’ garden,” which explains plant symbiosis, composting and proactive pest control. A moonlight garden walk is also on the class syllabus.

Dempsey has trays and trays of seedlings he’s started, ready for gardeners to put in the ground.  

The deadline to sign up for the class is May 6. To register or for more information, contact Wyncott at 815-272-5620 or seth.wyncott@gmail.com.