PALO ALTO, California—When the school year began a few weeks ago, Evelyn Villano-Green found a note pinned outside her garage. It was from a teacher in an experimental preschool favored by parents in this deceptively quiet city who like to give their little ones a creative, outside-the-box advantage as they begin their busy, busy lives here in the heart of Silicon Valley. In the note, the teacher asked if she could bring her pupils to Eve’s garden out front.
“Why not?” Eve tells this writer later. “Let them get down and dirty in the garden. That’s what my husband and my 3-year-old son and I do every day, and we end up eating fresh fruits and vegetables whenever we want.”
Her garden is a refreshing anomaly in this tony residential enclave of Eichler homes flowing from Middlefield Road, a main artery of this university town. While her neighbors have spacious, pristine lawns with artsy accents, Eve’s domicile welcomes you with a swath of corn stalks bent by their produce; giant sunflowers casting their shadows over you (she harvests the seeds embedded in their sun-turned faces); and rows of beans, okra, ampalaya, eggplants and kalabasa—practically a pinakbet garden.
And more: asparagus, broccoli, lettuce, arugula, spring onions, garlic, potatoes, strawberries, cherries and sweet potatoes, whose riot of purple leaves makes visitors think of hearty soups and salads.
“She took over the lawn because she has this thing about whipping up an impromptu fresh, organic salad without the trouble of going to the grocery,” says Ron, Eve’s husband, who has a leadership role in a tech security firm.
Chance encounter
Eve laughs and says, “I got started on the garden with strawberries and asparagus because Brandon loves to eat them all the time.”
Brandon is Eve and Ron’s son, born in the Philippines during the initial pandemic lockdown. The couple had met in a chance encounter at the Hong Kong airport months before the virus struck. She was taking selfies on her phone and, smitten, he offered to take her photos. He asked for her contact information before going off to his boarding gate. And then he began to call and message her every day—and hied off to the Philippines to visit her and get to know her family in Camarines Sur.
“Ron began to share my fondness for mangga, santol, niyog and duhat,” Eve shares.
In fact, he was amazed that she could climb these trees to harvest the fruits. “She can stand on a twig and it won’t break,” he says.
These days, their son has the run of their garden in Palo Alto, on his knees with Eve and Ron as they tend to their supply of plant-based meals.
“He gets to pick his food,” the mother says of her garden-loving son.
Which is not to say that the family is vegetarian. Ron loves her signature bulalo while Eve is proud of Ron’s generous slabs of barbecue and steak, with which she treats friends who come to stay for the occasional dinner.
But always, on the dining table or kitchen counter, there’s salad or soup featuring stuff freshly picked from the garden.
“A family that plants together,” Eve begins, and Ron finishes, “eats well together.” —CONTRIBUTED