“I understood that I could garden and cook by making my garden entirely edible”

I have always loved farming and cooking. I grew up in Picardy, in the bay of Authie, not far from the abbey of Valloires. My grandparents educated me in the garden and, from the age of 6, I had a small plot of land to grow radishes and lettuces. During my childhood and my adolescence, I wandered between my two passions, the land and the table, unable to choose a vocation. I simultaneously passed the competition for a school of landscaping and that of a hotel school. I was accepted into both, but I got the letter from landscape school a week before the other, which determined my path.

Around the age of 20, I practiced my hand in various gardens, while writing a column for a magazine which I had called “The fork and the rake”. I started to travel, to meet personalities, cooks and gardeners who would become my mentors – such as Christopher Lloyd, an exceptional writer and artist gardener, from the famous and abundant Great Dixter, his garden in England (I am now part of of its board of directors).

A revelation

It was the early 1990s and the first time I visited Christopher Lloyd, he offered me a simple and delicious lunch: a mixture of salads, a kind of mesclun magnified by flowers and leaves known, freshly harvested from the garden. It was a revelation. Shortly after, I went to interview Michelin-starred chef Olivier Roellinger at his restaurant in Cancale, Brittany. He told me a lot about his work with plants and also about his friend Michel Bras, in Aubrac, whom I went to meet afterwards.

In contact with them, I realized that the garden kitchen could be a selling point. I understood that, as a gardener that I was, I could combine my two passions, to realize my lifelong dream, to become a gardener and cook, by making my garden entirely edible. This led to the publication of my first book, A garden to eat (SAEP, 2004), then it matured further until the release of Everything is eaten in my garden (Ulmer, 2017), with a preface by my two mentor chefs, Olivier Roellinger and Michel Bras, and, finally, today with the publication of a real garden recipe book.

My favorite dish is a tribute and a direct reference to Michel Bras. Indeed, during my first lunch in his restaurant, I was very impressed by the gargouillou, his mythical vegetable dish which transcribes the season on the plate. I tasted it again over time, in all seasons, I even participated in picking with the cooks… Then I started doing the same thing in my own garden, composing my own dishes. One day, I sent a photo of my creation to Michel Bras, who immediately texted me back: “What a beautiful garbouillou! » I never knew if it was a deliberate pun with my name or a typo, but it christened my dish. It is a tribute to the Bras and Roellinger families, and to the garden in general – to all that it offers us over the days in colors, flavors, joy.