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Green living
Stephanie Holiman teaches organic gardening in OKC and Chile. By Jeremy Martin
Hearing farmers describe the modern agricultural methods at the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Stephanie Holiman decided she wanted to opt out. “That was it for me,” Holiman said. “I listened to that talk and said, “OK, I don’t want my food grown this way.” The 2003 World Social Forum’s motto was “Another world is possible,” but Holiman, living in Santiago, Chile, found few sources for food that hadn’t been mass-produced. “So what’s the alternative?” Holiman asked. “Organic gardening, and in Chile at that time, there was really nothing. I looked around for organic things, and it was really hard to find. There was an organic market once a year.” Determined to eat food free of genetic modifications and pesticides, Holiman began planting vegetables in her small apartment in the middle of the city. “I started growing seedlings in my windows and broccoli out of a pot,” Holiman said. After she moved with her husband into a larger house with a vegetable garden and fruit trees, these first forays into urban gardening eventually led to Huerto Hada Verde (Green Fairy Garden), an educational center in Santiago where Holiman teaches classes on organic gardening and herbal medicine. “Just friends and neighbors were involved at first,” Holiman said. “It was just kind of a semi-informal [community-supported agriculture project]. I was asking them to help with all of the gardening work and the harvesting and all that, and after awhile, I realized that
Stephanie Holiman started gardening when she was a teenager and began learning about organic gardening in 2003. | Photo Stephanie Holiman / provided
the people I had asked to help me with it were not as helpful as I hoped … and I realized that other people were more involved, like, ‘What is this project? I would really like to learn.’” Born in Edmond, Holiman traveled to Santiago, Chile, on a six-month trip to study Spanish and Latin American culture. While teaching English language classes, she met her husband, got married and ended up staying for nearly 20 years. Back in Oklahoma until March of 2019, Holliman is teaching classes for the first time in her native state at SixTwelve, Beautifully Connected, CommonWealth Urban Farms, Myriad Botanical Gardens and other locations before she returns to Chile next year so her 4-year-old son can start school.
Organic spirit
Holiman, who developed an interest in vegetables, herbs and plants in general when she became a vegetarian at the age of 15, said she was originally introduced to the idea of growing her own food at her aunt and uncle’s farm in El Reno. “I grew up, really, picking tomatoes and eating them right off the plant,” Holiman said. “My aunt was very much like do-it-yourself.” While the concept of growing your own food is more common in rural areas, Holiman said her first efforts at organic gardening in urban Santiago were met with confusion and surprise. “That was something that when I