The Gardens of Plenty
Editor’s Note: In France, Gardens of Plenty help provide not just vegetables but training and job skills. Yardfarms can be developed not just in backyards but in community spaces around towns and cities, helping to train others to not just make a living but to make their communities more sustainable, more food secure, more resilient.
Jardin Cocagne. Photo (CC): PHOTO CLUB de St Hilarion
In the Jardins de Cocagne gardens the jobless and homeless find self-confidence and support in creating a future.
How can people in difficult circumstances build autonomous lives? The answer might be found in the Jardins de Cocagne: by cultivating vegetables. Initiated in 1991 by Jean-Guy Henckel, the project has now taken root in several French regions. These gardens, whose name translates into the “Gardens of Plenty”, take in men and women in precarious living situations, such as welfare recipients, the long-term unemployed, or the homeless. Hired under a government-supported employment contract, they grow organic produce, which is then sold to subscribers by the basket. For up to two years, the gardeners work 24 hours a week for minimum wage under the guidance of professional vegetable farmers and social workers. “The objective here is not to exploit people out of commercial interest,” Henckel explains. “We are conflict mediators, because we manage to unite three feuding sisters: Society, Business, and Ecology. The Jardins de Cocagne must be economically viable, yet without turning a blind eye to human beings in their existential need, and without harming the planet.”
Networking and expanding
In order to consolidate its activities, the Cocagne network is currently building a donor fund consisting of tax-exempt private as well as corporate and public donations. Following the concept from the earth into the basket, the new Planète Sésame restaurants are now defining the motto as from the basket onto the plate. The restaurants are operated by people in reintegration programs and supplied with produce from the gardens. New projects are being launched, such as the Fleurs de Cocagne gardens that specialize in flower production. The latest Cocagne branch is located in “Europe’s Silicon Valley” on the Saclay plateau, right next to the technological research center Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, the business college École des Hautes Études Commerciales, and the Centrale, AgroParisTech, Polytechnique—an ambitious project featuring a farm, a restaurant, a hostel, and an 18-hectare organic vegetable garden.
