Exploring the Past to Create a Sustainable Future

Curator of historic landscapes at Strawbery Banke Museum. Co-founder of Slow Food Seacoast. Heirloom garden designer. Ethnobotanist. Herbalist. Author. National lecturer. Community activist. John Forti’s resume alone may make the average reader tired, but his energy and passion are quite motivating.

“I was taught to read the landscape at an early age,” John says. “From exploring stone walls in the woods, to unearthing arrowheads in fields as a child, I learned that understanding our history gives us a sense of place.”
 
That connection between history and a sense of place defines each of John’s personal and professional endeavors. His work as curator of historic landscapes at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is perhaps the most obvious example. According to its mission statement, Strawbery Banke teaches about preservation, community, and change over time, and was recently recognized by Garden Design magazine as one of four museums in the world to do so. The museum includes recreated and restored seventeenth century kitchen gardens, Victorian formal gardens, the gardens of a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant family, and a Victory Garden from World War II. Teaching gardens there include an herb garden, heritage orchards, and a Victorian Children’s Garden that John designed and installed for the museum in 2006.

“Museums of the past attempted to teach pure history. In the last decade, we have become better at making that history relevant to people today,” he says. “My goal at Strawbery Banke, and in all of my work, is to teach about the past to help create a more sustainable and fulfilling future.”

Indeed, teaching about the past to create a sustainable future links John’s work as a garden historian, heirloom gardener, and local foods advocate. He considers all of us to be “stewards of the environment we inherit.” Just as our ancestors may bequeath silver or jewelry to the next generation of family members, John views it as our collective responsibility to care for the gift of nature through conscientious gardening practices and principled food production.

“We all know in our hearts that something is wrong with the way food is produced in this country, and with our loss of connection to what we eat,” John says, “We are looking for greater grounding in a frenetic culture, and we’re finding it in gardening.” While John refers to the new attention being paid to gardening and local foods as a revolution, he is quick to note that it is also a return to gardening practices of a not-too-distant past.

“Our system of food production has changed more over the past forty to sixty years than in the previous 40,000 years,” John notes, echoing a recent article in the Washington Post by Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and co-producer of the documentary, Food, Inc. Genetically modified corn and soybeans designed to withstand a barrage of herbicides and chemical fertilizers, chemical additives, factory farms, and government subsidies for a centralized and industrialized system of food production are new phenomena and can be reversed.

To help reverse these recent developments, John has devoted much of his career to educating people about the importance of heirloom gardening. John (also known as “The Heirloom Gardener” on Facebook) is working to help preserve heirloom crops and historic food sources that once enabled Seacoast residents to eat year-round from local farms and their own backyards. 

In 2006, John, along with Alison McGill and Amy Pollard, co-founded Slow Food Seacoast, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based chapter of Slow Food USA and the international Slow Food movement. He says that Slow Food Seacoast “works toward a healthier food system, slowing down the pace of life by focusing on the pleasures of good, clean, and fair food.” The group sponsors talks and events that promote local foods and organic gardening, including free potluck Sunday Suppers that feature fare from local farms and resurrect the concept of the weekly family meal. 

“The local foods movement seeks to rebuild communities one garden and one meal at a time,” he says. “The artisanal crafts known to gardeners through the centuries are once again taking root in the farmers markets, backyards, and kitchens of the twenty-first century.” Renewed attention to growing heirloom varieties of food and the rejection of genetically modified, chemically laden, and factory-farmed food is leading to a “new democratization of American food.”

“My grandfather and the women and men of his generation and earlier generations took great pride in consuming the fruits of their labor,” John says. “The Slow Food movement is not a new concept at all.” In fact, the Slow Food movement reminds him of another food revolution of recent history: Victory Gardens of the 1940s.

“It was considered patriotic to grow food during World War II. The Victory Garden movement brought a troubled culture together over community food production,” says John, adding that over half of all food produced in the United States during the Victory Garden movement was produced in the backyards of Americans. “Today in New Hampshire, less than 6 percent of our food is grown within the state. We are a troubled culture now, and we are organizing over food and gardening once again.”

Perhaps the most interesting irony of the Slow Foods movement is the speed with which it has spread—locally, nationally, and internationally. “Today’s culture moves at a different pace, “ he observes. “We plan events, communicate, and even garden differently now, by sharing information instantaneously.” That instant communication via technology—itself a component of a speed-oriented nation—has also become the leading method for spreading the message to slow down, something that gardening itself does by nature.

A self-described former Luddite, John credits social networking for bringing the local foods and heirloom gardening revolution to the mainstream. “Social networking has created new communities of people connected over common interests,” he notes. “Facebook makes information accessible to everyone, instantly reaching thousands of people 24/7. It is a democratic means of communication.”

Children and families also learn differently today, and last year John created “Listen to the Landscape,” an iPhone app and cell phone tour of the historic gardens at Strawbery Banke. The app and phone tour enable generations of learners to access an illustrated and engaging landscape history 24 hours a day.

“It is ironic, perhaps, but we are using the best advances of the past few decades to promote slowing down, taking control, and returning to nature,” he says. “It’s an integral part of the movement now.”