An Introduction to Kinship Gardening

By Heather Coburn

The first time I went to visit Dr. Alan "Mushroom" Kapuler, in the early Spring of 2000, it changed my life forever. At the time he was the Research Director for Seeds of Change, an all-organic seed company which he co-founded in 1989. I remember following him around; he had several varieties of kale blooming at the time and the field was alight with color and chaos. As we walked through the two-acre field known as Brown's garden, Mushroom would wave his arms around, dropping names of obscure plant specimens and ranting about world politics. He had planted a kinship garden, representing 500 species, in a 30' x 96' heated greenhouse. The greenhouse was a world in itself, a world where Agave and Banana and Olive and Jasmine are planted among their botanical relations and where an eccentric hippie gardener genius can grow thousands of species of plants out to seed and be a pivotal figure in the preservation of global biodiversity with just two leased acres near Corvallis, Oregon.

I had no idea what I was looking at, only that it gave a whole new meaning to the concept of diversity. I knew that I would strive to understand the meaning of "kinship gardening". I knew that I wanted to become a kinship gardener.

The History of Kinship Gardening

In the mid 1700's, Swedish naturalist Carl Linneaus classified the plants. He did so mainly based on the physical characteristics of the flowers. For the past 250 years, any newly "discovered" plants have been pushed into the existing categories, and any new categories have been also based on what the flower looks like. In the late 1900's, scientists were able to unlock the doors to the genetic mysteries in plants and animals. Using this new information, a team of the world's top 10 botanists, called the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG), set about the intensive task of re-evaluating the placement of the plants, based on their genes, or essentially, their genetic evolution. This new information both simplifies and magnifies the way plants are classified.

I've included a list of the botanical categories established by the APG, (see fig. 1) along with a few examples of the plants in each category:

MONOCOTS

Commelinoids: Corn, Ginger, Bananas, Sedges, Grasses, Palms, Canna.

Asparagoids: Lilies, Agave, Onions, Iris, Orchids, Asparagus.

Also includes: Yams, Taro, Eelgrass, Screwpines.

DICOTS

The Old Ones: Laurel, Schizandra, Eleagnus, Wild Ginger, Protea, Water lotus, Magnolia, Star Anise, Avocado.

Eudicots: Poppies, Columbine, Oregon Grape, Barberries.

Core Eudicots: Saxifrages, Succulents, Cacti, Amaranth, Beets, Quinoa, Buckwheat, Rhubarb, Gooseberry, Peony, Grapes, Witch Hazel.

Rosids: Geraniums.

Eurosids 1: Roses, Peaches, Raspberries, Hemp, Hops, Mulberry, Elm, Legumes, Oxalis, Euphorbia, Flax, Squash, Begonias, Willow, Passionfruit, Violas.

Eurosids 2:  Broccoli, Mustard, Horseradish, Nasturtium, Papaya, Myrtle, Eucalyptus, Neem, Citrus, Mango, Rue, Cotton, Chocolate, Linden, Mallow.

Asterids: Pitcher plants, Impatiens, Madrone, Blueberries, Kiwi, Persimmons, Tea, Brazil Nuts, Dogwoods, Hydrangea.

Euasterids 1: Comfrey, Potatoes, Tobacco, Morning glory, Mints, Mullein, Olives, Milkweed, Coffee, Butterfly Bush, Ash, Jasmine, Forsythia.

Euasterids 2: Sunflowers, Marigolds, Lettuce, Artichokes, Yarrow, Lobelia, Campanula, Carrots, Angelica, Ginseng, Gotu Kola, Holly, Teasel

Practical Applications

Over the past twenty years, Alan Kapuler (Mushroom) has developed a series of detailed layouts, using a bubble mapping system introduced by Danish botanist Rolf Dahlgren. These maps enable us to see which plants are botanical kin to one another, and provide a strategic plan for preserving plant diversity and examining how this plan translates into garden design and plant selection. Mushroom believes this concept of kinship is at the core of understanding how to conserve and perpetuate diversity. He planted several gardens in a variety of kinship layouts, and collaborated with long time friend and colleague Gabriel Howearth (co-founder of Seeds of Change), to implement a tropical kinship oasis in Baja California.

Mushroom and I are currently working together to create a new kinship garden, using the maps and incorporating the many new developments and discoveries since his first gardens, a decade ago. We intend to have representations from every plant family that will grow in temperate Oregon, and anticipate the garden will hold approximately 1000 different species of edible, useful and endangered plants.

Since that first visit to Brown's Garden in rainy March of 2000, I have collected approximately 200 species of plants, representing over 50 plant families. At first the plants were just a cluster of pots in a community garden plot. When we moved from our very urban duplex rental to a more spacious quarter-acre lot, the collection increased to a cluster of pots that filled our front yard and driveway for two years while we looked for a site to implement the first ever Co-evolutionary Permaculture Kinship Garden.

A few months ago, we rented several acres from John and Marsha Sundquist at Rivers' Turn Farm in Coburg, Oregon, and started working toward the installation of a kinship garden on a one-acre loam bank. I dove into the design process and immediately realized I still had no idea what I was looking at, even though I've gardened intensively for six years and have spent many hours talking and working with Mushroom. However, I re-read his articles, reviewed basic botany, applied permaculture principles and came up with a simplified garden layout, based loosely around the "Time Vine" (fig. 1) I found in Peace Seeds' Resource Journal #9. (See fig. 1)

Whatever design method you choose, the easiest way to understand kinship gardening is to plant one. This can be as simple as putting your annual vegetable garden into a kinship layout, or as complicated as developing a full-scale representation of the world flora, with detailed layouts for each plant family. Start small and see where your inspiration takes you.

What follows is a step-by-step approach that seems to be working well for us here at the HOPE Farm:

• Step 1. Assemble a modest but diverse collection of interesting and unusual plants. This collection will vary based on space, resources, and availability. You will need to choose whether to focus on one particular family or order of plants, or perhaps you will decide to focus on edible or medicinal plants. We chose to represent the larger picture, with just a few plants from each order. You may choose to go with the smaller picture; for example, a sage garden could hold up to 900 species from the Salvia genus.
• Step 2. Once you've got some plants together, inventory them. Make a list with the species, genus, family and order or each plant. It's helpful to put this list into a computer database and sort it. You may have to cross-reference to find out the information you need. A list of helpful books can be found at the end of this article.
• Step 3. On paper, develop a map of your plants, using the kinship maps developed by Alan Kapuler, and improvising where you need to, based on physical characteristics, space and water needs, and personal experience. Remember that this is an evolutionary process!  I have included a simple layout of a food garden (see fig. 2) to give you a place to start. For a packet containing other maps and the basic data, please contact me and I'll send it to you. (This info will also be up on the web at www.hopefarm.net by September 2003). Or, you can contact Mushroom at the address below for a complete set of his Resource Journals, complete with articles, maps and photographs.
• Step 4. Install the garden. How we did it is by pacing out the distances between orders and placing markers for each. The lines on the map became our main paths and everything in between became the beds. I didn't worry too much about smaller paths into the beds, figuring that, while plants grew and established themselves, and as our feet found their way through the garden, the secondary paths would soon emerge on their own. After the markers were placed, we set out the plants in clusters, next to the sign bearing the name of the order they belonged to. For some orders, we had only one token plant. For others, we had twenty or so plants from the same or related families. These plants were then sorted even further, and placed according to their relationships with each other. In areas where we had no plants to represent the order, I just filled in with a neighboring group, in the interest of filling up the garden. We'll find more plants later, and why not grow annual crops while the perennials get established?

Some advice for laypeople: Because many of the orders and families are shifting and changing, don't fret too much about the details. Work toward a general understanding of the layout in order to optimize the diversity of your garden. For practical applications of kinship gardening, it behooves one to be a lumper rather than a splitter. Remember that the goal is to create a library of diversity for you, your fellow gardeners, and future generations to enjoy.

The Future of Kinship Gardening

If one thousand people each take on the stewardship of one plant family, then the world flora will be protected twice over. If ten thousand people each take on ten families, well, you get the picture. Just devote 1% of your farm or garden to the preservation of rare plants and see where it goes from there.

Kinship gardening is a way to get people out of the laboratory and into the garden. And we all know what happens to someone once they get some good organic compost under their fingernails! At any rate, as environmental and genetic degradation become more widespread, kinship gardening can provide a viable approach to the conservation of biodiversity.

On July 8, the HOPE Farm hosted a workshop on Kinship Gardening. Mushroom took us through the evolution of the kinship layouts, and we worked to refine the placements of the plants in our garden. This workshop was the first of its kind, and we hope to build a strong local community of interested and integrated kinship gardeners. We are currently looking for volunteers adn donations of plants, seeds an dequipment. Please contact 541-343-HOPE.

Resources

Alan & Linda Kapuler, Peace Seeds, A Planetary Gene-pool Resource,  2385 SE Thompson, Corvallis, OR 97233. Seeds, plants and Resource Journals available by mail order.

Gabriel & Kitzia Howearth, Siempre Semillas, PO Box 9, Santiago, BCS, Mexico or siempresemillas@yahoo.com

Some good books to help with kinship gardening:

The Plant-Book, D.J. Mabberley, Cambridge University Press, 1987

Cornucopia II, A Source Book of Edible Plants, Stephen Facciola, Kampong Publications, 1998

Why Kinship Gardening?

Excerpted from Dr. Mushroom Kapuler

1. To give us insight into the fabric of life. The mosaic puzzle of living organisms has a deep internal pattern. This pattern is similar amongst all living things, especially between plants and animals. Using the history of generations to organize gardens is a way to generate visions into the higher order structure intrinsic to life.
2. To preserve a broad and deep sampling of plants by establishing gardens that maximize diversity. The idea is to explore the fabric of life by planting gardens that have as many different kinds of plants as possible. Thus we achieve several things simultaneously; conservation, diversification, education, exploration and discovery.
3. To establish sanctuaries that are harmonic subsets of the world flora. The destruction of habitats continues worldwide at an inconceivably rapid pace. The more we explore, the more we destroy. The result is the loss of whole communities of organisms. Our gardens can become alternative environments for the refugees from the struggle for the Earth. By using kinship layouts we develop new possibilities for growth, survival and success.