Tomato-gate: how I reclaimed my garden

Nothing beats befuddling my French garden neighbors each year with ridiculously early, cold-resistant tomatoes. I live in a tumbledown village in the Languedoc, population just shy of 1,000, and come spring each year I make it my business to confound the local gardening orthodoxy. My secret weapon is a full-spectrum LED grow light in my basement. Shhhhh! It’s not as illicit as it sounds – yes, they really are tomatoes that I’m growing, officer.

While the local vieux garçons are still sharpening their spades and waiting for the Tramontane wind to stop scaring the dogs, I’ve been working in my subterranean lair since January, coaxing my Solanum lycopersicum into early adolescence. By early April – nighttime temperatures permitting – I’m planting out two-foot tall specimens bearing actual fruit in my sheltered potager.

Now, don’t get the wrong idea about me. I’ve always considered myself neighborly. I share dozens of surplus plants to help others get a head start. And this year, I did something truly generous – I gave a spare key to my garden to my neighbor.

He is Nepali, a fairly recent arrival to the village, and visibly wilting under the dual pressure of cultural displacement and young children whose sole mission on Earth is to reduce the world to rubble and shrieking. He was stuck in a tiny apartment, unable to find work, and was quickly becoming depressed. We bonded over our shared language, English, a love for chilli peppers – and a visceral hatred of Duolingo.

And to his credit, my neighbor was immensely helpful in clearing the Himalayan-scale brambles I’d allowed to take over after the recent drought years.

So, in a moment of goodwill (and perhaps slight madness), I handed over a key and said he and his children could visit the garden from time to time, smell the herbs, and marvel at a zucchini forming from a yellow flower.

I quickly regretted my generosity.

The first infraction was my overwintered purple sprouting broccoli. I found a few sprigs torn off and left like battlefield shrapnel on a nearby path. I said nothing. I had more than I could use. Occasionally I’d find my salad bed recovering from being trampled, watering cans emptied, and trowels and other hand tools hidden inexplicably.

But then came the sacrilege. I walked into the garden to find – horror of horticultural horrors – a green tomato plucked, prematurely murdered, and then flung, unloved, on to the ground.

Before I knew it, I’d sent my neighbor a WhatsApp. A photo of the victim, accompanied by the message: “Please educate your children not to pick green tomatoes! They’re welcome to them when they’re ripe though.”

While I softened the blow with a heart emoji, I knew exactly what I was doing when I chose the word educate. It’s one of those delicious Anglo-French false friends – perfectly civilized in English, but in French, éduquer doesn’t just mean “to teach”; it implies moral upbringing, discipline and parental competence. A minefield, really. And yes, I knew it.

However, instead of speaking with his two children, he chose flight over fight and simply forwarded the message to his French wife, noting it was “her problem,” as she was the one who had taken the boys to the garden that day.

She did not take it well.

That evening, she stormed over in a fury, cheeks blazing, and returned the garden key as if handing over evidence in a trial. “C’est mon travail d’éduquer mes enfants!” she declared – voice trembling, finger wagging, righteousness practically steaming off her.

Now, I did, at one point, gently attempt to explain the nuance – that in English, the word doesn’t quite carry the same maternal-weighted gravitas. But by then, it was far too late. She had emotionally committed to the idea that I had questioned her authority as a mother.

Even with the ChatGPT-powered clarification, she wouldn’t back down. She kept spitting venom. And just like that, the garden was mine again.

I’ve got my spare key back – and with it, my peace. The tomatoes are settling in. The garden has returned to being my sanctuary. And in an apartment far too close by, a Frenchwoman is probably still mispronouncing my name with great contempt over dinner.

But in the quiet of my garden, as I tie up the cordons and stroke the fine hairs of a young Koralik Pearl tomato, I can at least claim innocence. The wind will pass. And the locals will scratch their heads once more and say, “Mais comment est-ce possible…?” To which I shall reply, as ever, “Ah, it’s just luck… and a little bit of English je ne sais quoi.”

Dan Fox is a former US editor of Urban Garden magazine. This article was originally published in The Spectator’s June 2025 World edition.