Bill Merrill has been in love with plants and gardening for forty years. He has experimented with different approaches—natural, organic, permaculture—and still uses them all. He was a farmer in Wisconsin; he has grown food for the farmers market in Union City; and he now manages a nursery in Fremont.

When Merrill and his partner Ellen Train moved into their Fremont home, it took five trips with an 18-foot U-Haul to bring over all of Merrill’s plants. He and Train divided the backyard into his-and-hers areas where experimentation and whimsy, flowers and food are now the order of the day.

Train’s section, closer to the house, has a lawn of alfalfa where she hangs out the laundry. Bulbs and dahlias are sprinkled throughout. A couple of dress mannequins have migrated from the Nordstrom Distribution Center, where Train works, into her flower beds. A bonsai gingko grows from a Tonka truck.

Merrill has snuck a couple trees into Train’s part of the garden, including a pawpaw. Merrill read about the pawpaw in his teens, in Stalking the Wild Asparagus. He calls it the fabulous unknown fruit. “I’m another one of those idiots with a folly,” Merrill says. “People laugh at me—until they taste the fruit.”

The perimeter of Merrill’s part of the yard is lined with subtropical and temperate climate trees—avocado, sapayote, guava, banana, citrus, apple. Merrill has 25 varieties of apples; five of them are on a single tree. Merrill harvests the fruit in “two turns”—the temperate fruits mature during the long days of summer; the subtropicals come on during the short days of winter.

The interior of the garden is filled with rows of veggies. Merrill has broccoli and carrots growing year-round, as well as leafy greens such as lettuce, endive, escarole, spinach, and radicchio. The winter garden features cabbage, celery, and cauliflower as well as Stockton red onions, Walla Walla onions, and garlic. He grows winter squash and summer squash; Merrill also plants and enjoys all the warm weather crops, including sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, melons, and cucumbers. 

Merrill has five compost bins that he stations in strategic locations such as the base of a tree or a dormant veggie bed. When the compost matures, he relocates the bin, leaving the compost behind. In the winter the bins may be stationary for four months; in the summer, Merrill says he’s moving them every four weeks.

The Advantages of Growing Your Own
When asked why edible gardening appeals to him, Merrill’s first response is: “I eat.”  Then he elaborates on some of the reasons he chooses to grow your own produce.

• Quality, taste, and selection. “Most—not all—but most of the food I find in stores in inferior to what I can grow.” In addition, Merrill can grow foods that he can’t find in stores.
  
• It’s clean. “With inorganic and even organic foods, you don’t know what you’re getting. Even organic foods can have pesticide residues.”
  
• Less impact on the environment. “As a home gardener I use less water, I don’t erode the soil, and I don’t use pesticides or fungicides at all, so I don’t contaminate the soil.”
  
• It’s cheaper. For the cost of seeds and water, Merrill can grow organic produce that would go for top dollar at the market. Besides, Merrill adds, “I love to eat avocadoes and limes.”