By Aurelia C. Scott
Photos by Tara Rice
From our September 2024 issue
When Kerry and Chris Stetson bought their Yarmouth home, in 2009, they looked forward to planting a big vegetable garden in the backyard. They rototilled a 90-by-30-foot patch, added manure from their small flock of chickens, planted, cultivated, and harvested. “Growing our own food felt life-changing,” Kerry says. Yet, despite evenings and weekends spent straining their backs tending to their plot, weeds eventually began to take over. And despite their attempts to amend the soil, it turned to mud, then solid clay, every time it rained. For three years in a row, the plot bore very little fruit. “We knew we had to do something different,” Chris says.
The couple dug into ecological research and discovered “all that tilling and hoeing was ruining the microbiome,” Chris says. “That’s the mix of bacteria, fungi, and insects that guard against disease and make nutrients available to plants.” They decided to try hügelkultur, or “hill culture,” a centuries-old German method that involves gardening in tall mounds composed of logs, branches, and other compostable material covered in topsoil. “You plant in the top layer and the slowly rotting wood adds nutrients to soil that you never need to till,” Chris says. Plus, the hills would allow them to garden mostly standing up. “No more crawling around on the ground!” Kerry says.
To contain the mounds, the Stetsons wanted sturdy frames that wouldn’t decompose along with their planting material. “But the pandemic struck and we couldn’t find anything to buy,” Kerry says. So they purchased a custom metal-stamping machine and spent three years prototyping their own enclosures. Today, rows of 20 corrugated-steel beds, each measuring 39 inches wide and 36 inches tall and ranging from four and a half to 14 feet long, gleam beneath a cornucopia of flowers, herbs, and vegetables in their backyard. Climbing plants color a wide arch of cattle-panel fencing, and walkways layered with hay and wood chips keep weeds down between the beds, which are filled with branches and logs from fallen trees, leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, and six inches of soil and compost.
On a sunny August morning last year, feathery asparagus plants wafted above dense clusters of emerald strawberry leaves. Lacquer-orange Turkish eggplants glowed like gemstones in a bed of chard and lemon cucumbers. At the feet of Anasazi Cave pole beans, marigolds in sunrise shades attracted pests away from other plants. A hummingbird fed from the tubular flowers of scarlet runner beans, and trellised Blue Cream cherry tomatoes shaded romaine lettuce. “The most important thing about any garden is that it has to be nice enough to get you out there,” Kerry said, picking a red nasturtium from a jumble of edible flowers. “Now, I don’t even have to bend over to thin the carrots. This kind of gardening is a joy.”
