Our Culinary Gardener’s Tale of Love and Resilience
By Katie Davis
It’s hard to imagine anything in the human experience more unifying than food. If you know or love a chef—or perhaps are a chef yourself—you understand that preparing food isn’t something a chef does with just their hands or brain. Cooking good food requires your soul, and if you’re lucky enough to be cooking for someone you love, your heart. If you know or love a gardener—or perhaps are a gardener yourself—you understand that gardeners and chefs have this thing in common.
While the perfect expression of salt, fat, acid and heat makes the chef’s heart soar, a committed gardener will be hopelessly in love with something else—the land. Though it sounds romantic, loving a piece of land is not always rational or even tangibly rewarding. We labor in accordance with ancient rhythms, honoring the soil and teasing miracles from the alchemy of mineral, air, water and sunlight. Our modern bodies rebel against the extremes of heat and cold, rain and drought, wind and sun. Sometimes we lose crops to freak storms, freezes and droughts, yet we do it anyway. The reward is tantalizing, always driving us forward. In recent seasons, I’ve insisted on celebrating the first veggies of the season with party hats—yes, little paper party hats. I love honoring the “firsts” this way. For a moment, everyone present is witnessing the miracle of fresh produce (while having a good laugh).
I have tended the gardens at both Silver Oak properties in Oakville and Healdsburg for over eight years. In that time, I’ve fallen in love with more than the land. The food—really good food—that our chefs prepare with the vegetables, fruits, microgreens and edible flowers sourced from my gardens and the world-class surrounding farms of Sonoma County (and beyond!) is divine. Ah, did I forget to mention wine? That, too. How can you not fall in love with all of this? The joy I feel watching our chefs transform a carrot into a work of art on the plate is one of the best parts of my job and knowing our customers share this experience is rewarding.
Some of my favorite things about my job are the challenges that arise from attempting something new. I have four beds of green and purple asparagus, and each spring, this iconic spring vegetable’s arrival is highlighted and celebrated on our menus. It’s no secret that chefs love variety, so having the two colors to play with on the plate is exciting. However, this year, I noticed white asparagus was being ordered in. (White asparagus is created by excluding all light from green spears, stopping chlorophyll production in the plant, creating a pure white spear.) On the growing end, it’s very difficult, time-consuming and requires enveloping the crowns in some sort of structure (either in the field or the crowns are moved) that completely blocks all light. The thought of attempting white asparagus was always overwhelming, but as the saying goes, the only real way to fail is to never try at all. In the spring of 2024, I decided it was time to give it a go.
A colleague who sometimes helps me in the gardens, Jayro, and I set about creating a light-blocking tent of fabric using wire hoops, string, black fabric, and sandbags. A harvest that already involved squatting to ground level and individually cutting tiny stems each morning now required throwing off sandbags, peeling back a fabric tent, harvesting, then replacing the tent while painstakingly ensuring that no light leaked in. The first time performing this song-and-dance had me wondering if this was worth the extra effort. Yet when I pulled back the tent that April morning, there it was—white asparagus! Bring out the party hats.
Silver Oak Culinary Gardener Katie Davis harvests yellow snapdragon flowers.
Green and purple asparagus—with the hard-won white asparagus—from the culinary garden in Oakville.
The raised bed gardens outside the tasting room in Healdsburg is open to guests.
In the tasting rooms, wine and food pairings feature vegetables and garnishes from the culinary garden.
A diversity of Asian greens are grown on-site and add color and brightness to the plate.
In a chaotic world, the garden can be a respite for us all—a little corner of beauty, peace and tranquility. The next time you visit Wine Country, be sure to look out for the incredible gardens that provide the farm-to-table experiences we are famous for. In these gorgeous spaces, we are cultivating not just food, but a deeper connection to the earth, each other and our guests.