When we bought our house in 2018, I didn't have any particular plans for the land.
It was primarily a house. With a bit more space than I had known before. And like many people in this situation, I quickly wanted to grow things there. A small vegetable garden. Some small fruits. Already a few herbs — thyme, rosemary, lavender — planted on the south side where the sun shines well.
Nothing very thought out. Just the natural desire to use that space.
The land
The plot itself was interesting without being exceptional. An old sandy meadow, once linked to a small goat farm, mowed regularly for years. The soil was poor over most of the land — sandy, dry, with little visible life on the surface. A few poppies here, a patch of daisies there. Three trees already well established: a walnut, a chestnut, a elderberry. That was about it.
We moved in the spring of 2020. And the first seasons were like they are for most beginner gardeners: trials, failures, adjustments. We moved a crop. We tried another area. We added a new species. We observed what thrived and what disappeared.
What surprised me the most in those early years was the difference between the top and bottom of the land. The bottom of the plot behaved completely differently. The soil there was darker, cooler, more alive. Water flowed differently in that area, and it showed. That's where I set up my second vegetable area, and that's where things grew best.
What changed my way of looking
Alongside the garden, my professional activity was evolving.
For several years, I worked in the field of aromatic and medicinal plants internationally with plant materials sometimes produced thousands of kilometers away, crossing several countries before reaching a European buyer. Long, complex supply chains, with logistical costs, footprints, dependencies that we end up not questioning because they are part of the scenery.
And without really realizing it, a question began to settle in as I looked at my land in the evening.
Among everything we import, what could we produce here? Not everything, of course. But certainly more than we imagine.
It was probably at that moment that this land began to change function in my mind.
From the garden to the laboratory
Starting in 2022, something concretely shifts.
I plant fewer and fewer annual vegetables and more and more perennial species. Small fruits, specialized aromatics, the first medicinal plants. I begin to systematically mulch with what the land produces itself: mowings, residues, chips. I stop exporting organic matter. I seek to close the cycles rather than open them.
In 2023, I make a decision that seems simple but changes a lot of things: I permanently abandon mechanical soil work. No more tiller, no more digging. I let the soil restructure itself from the inside.
This is not an ideological decision. It is a decision based on observation: the areas where I did not intervene often fared better than those I worked on regularly. The soil, when left undisturbed and covered, does things that no machine does as well.
Today
The land now has more than 78 useful plant species. The areas have multiplied and differentiated. The soil has changed — visually, texturally, biologically. Species have appeared without being planted. Others have disappeared. The system evolves, sometimes in directions we did not foresee.
This garden has become something other than a garden. A place to observe, test, document. Not to demonstrate that this way of doing things is the best. But to honestly understand what a 20-are space can become when given the time and conditions to develop.
This is what these notebooks will tell, season after season.