Quick Takes With: Chloe Moore

Our new book, Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden (in stores October 14 and available for pre-order now), is chock-full of inspiring environmentally minded plantspeople—including Chloe Moore, the tireless farm manager at Southside Community Farm in Asheville, NC. Conceived as an urban farm and food hub, the one-acre lot grows organic produce for locals in need and encourages a more intimate connection between the land and the people of color who live there. At the farm, anyone can wander by and pluck an apple from the orchard or pick a tomato off the vine or grab a fresh snack from the outdoor refrigerator—no payment accepted and no questions asked.

Chloe, who identifies as “a queer, Black and Borikua-Taino, landless farmer, educator and parent who loves to eat good food, sing to plants, and play in the dirt,” is passionate about the farm’s mission to support food sovereignty in the historically Black community. She’s also serious about strawberries (yes!), eggplants (a hard no!), and the hori-hori her partner hand-forged just for her (“my favorite!”). 

Photography by Caitlin Atkinson, from Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden, unless noted.

Your first garden memory:

When I was very young I lived with my grandparents, who always had a garden. I used to love sucking the juice out of ripe, sweet cherry tomatoes in the summer.

Garden-related book you return to time and again:

Working the Roots by Michelle E. Lee is a fantastic book of traditional Black, land-based knowledge. While not really a gardening book in the traditional sense, I always come back to it for wit, ancestral wisdom, and making home remedies from what I grow.

Instagram account that inspires you:

I feel like I always learn good information from @seedingsovereignty.

Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.

Lush, diverse, welcoming.

Plant that makes you swoon:

Nothing beats a fresh strawberry in the springtime. Strawberries are definitely one of my all-time favorites, but they’re also a great gateway plant for kids. We do a lot of youth education at Southside Community Farm, and when kids are skeptical about being outside or trying fresh fruits and veggies, strawberries are a sure way to their hearts.

Plant that makes you want to run the other way:

Eggplant. It’s always been one of my least favorite foods, and I’m not a fan of the spines on the plants, either!

Favorite go-to plant:

Roselle. I think it’s gorgeous and I love making teas and tinctures from its beautiful red calyxes.

Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:

Nothing is permanent—not the plants nor the garden itself. The point of caring for living things is not for them to live forever, but for them to live well. As a peasant farmer and non-land owner, I’ve been displaced from the land that I’ve stewarded many times in my life and it’s always heartbreaking. But ultimately, all the land is one land. To care for living beings anywhere mutually benefits us everywhere.

Unpopular gardening opinion:

Non-edible flowers are overrated. A lot of friends and community members come to me for gardening advice, and I sometimes have to disappoint folks with my lack of flower garden knowledge. Don’t get me wrong, I grow plenty of multi-purpose flowers (such as bee balm for tea, calendula for salve making, and nasturtiums for salads), but if you can’t eat it or make medicine out of it, I probably won’t grow it.

Old wives’ tale gardening trick that actually works:

Slugs love beer! My dad always used beer traps to get rid of slugs in the garden, and today it’s my go-to for natural slug control when they try to eat my cabbages and collard greens.

Favorite way to bring the outdoors in.

I have a lot of easy houseplants, like aloe. I have also been known to treat crop plants like houseplants on occasion. For example, sweet potatoes have lovely foliage that looks great in a hanging pot.

Every garden needs a…

…secret shady spot for reading a good book! When I was little, I would climb into a forsythia bush in my grandparents’ yard to have my own little secret garden. Now I have a bench set up at Southside Community Orchard that gives me the same magical feeling of being blissfully alone in nature, even in a public community garden space.

Tool you can’t live without:

A hori hori (Japanese weeding knife) is definitely my favorite. Mine was made by my partner, Max, who is a blacksmith. Together we started Liberation Tools, a non-profit project which creates high quality, hand-forged farm and garden tools. We use a lot of reclaimed materials for our tool making and sell tools at twice the cost of production, so for every tool sold we can gift one to a land steward of color.

Go-to gardening outfit:

Definitely nothing too cute! My standard uniform is an old t-shirt, a pair of Carhartt work pants and some rain boots.

Favorite nursery, plant shop, or seed company:

Sow True Seed is a local, employee-owned cooperative seed company here in Asheville. They support our farm every year with free seeds, so of course they’re my favorite!

On your wishlist:

I’m trying to get a stirrup hoe with a reeeeally long handle. I’m not sure they exist so I might have to get my partner to make one for me. When you’re a farmer, there are some pretty great perks to dating a blacksmith.

Not-to-be-missed public garden/park/botanical garden:

I have to shout out our own community farm, which is a public space that anyone can come to and enjoy. In addition to our farm space, we steward a community orchard and food forest just up the street that makes a lovely little picnic spot. There are also two other Black-led community gardens in Asheville which serve as beautiful public spaces. So if you’re in the Asheville area definitely check out Southside Community Farm, but also head over to Shiloh Community Garden and Burton Street Peace Gardens.

The REAL reason you garden:

Just to see cute little creatures. I will ooh and aah over a snail or a garden toad all day long.