What does developing “the living” mean in my opinion? In one sentence, I would say that it is gardening whilst considering the living, people included, as a verb and our world as the book on which this verb is written at every moment. My job thus boils down to giving all living things the opportunity to fully express themselves, whilst ensuring that it does not impact on people or their infrastructure and vice versa. It is to offer non-humans the right of citizenship as I believe that in the end, one should not advance by developing alone, but by developing the rest of biodiversity as much as oneself. The gardening profession is clearly one of the future. I am sure that we will soon see astronaut gardeners!

While waiting for future generations to create this semi-humble, half galactic future, my favorite field remains a lot closer to us. In practise, my speciality is urban biodiversity and the vegetable garden where all sorts of living things may be found: animals or plants; the domestic, the feral or the savage, the terrestrial, aerial or aquatic, the exceptional, the common or the invasive. 

With a vegetable garden, we can teach children about the animals and plants that surround them, as well as a great deal of technical knowledge. To conclude this biography, this is what I consider to have been one of my best achievements in a school vegetable garden: that my Elementary students were able to prepare and offer, with homegrown potatoes, French fries for their entire school! A simple but effective accomplishment, a feast day at school and a good example of what I call “developing the living”.