Cybèle Idelot, cook & Samuel Gaspoz, gardener, in the kitchen garden of Domaine les Bruyères

In 2018, Cybèle and Frank Idelot were looking for a simple plot of land to set up a vegetable garden to supply their Boulogne-Billancourt establishment. They came across this beautiful property in the Chevreuse valley, a former coaching inn, and fell in love with it at first sight. They bought it, renovated it, and set up a restaurant and guest rooms. And, of course, a vegetable garden. Or rather, a first version, which didn't work out so well. A new gardener, Samuel Gaspoz, whom Cybèle discovered on the Internet, was called in to help. He starts from scratch.

Gault&Millau: Wasn't your first intention to open a second restaurant?

Cybèle Idelot: Initially, all we were looking for was a plot of virgin land, with no trace of chemical fertilizers or pesticides. We didn't find what we were looking for, so we started looking at larger plots of land with, eventually, a house, because there were more offers. This was the first place we visited, and we fell in love with it. We saw ten others, but settled on this one. We immediately decided to open a restaurant there. Of course, to make the purchase of the land profitable, but it wasn't just a question of finance. It was a question of project. The location inspired us.

G&M: What was the first kitchen garden like?

C. I.: We started it with someone else. It was much smaller, 1,000 m2. It was pretty, in the shape of a mandala, but more aesthetic than practical. The space wasn't optimized. Since Samuel's arrival, things have changed completely. It's now 2,000 m2, and every square centimetre is put to good use.

Samuel Gaspoz: The old kitchen garden was designed according to a certain permaculture ideology, but without taking needs into account, without adapting it to the climate, the flora and fauna, and without considering the problem of water. We're on a very special kind of soil, sandy, with a lot of water circulating underneath. When it comes up, it's slush everywhere, all the time. We're walking on water! During the Covid-19 period, Cybèle and Frank tried to manage the problem, but the vegetation took over again. When I arrived, there were weeds on all sides. You couldn't see the vegetables - it was anarchy!

G&M: How did you manage it?

S. G.: This project allows me to put all my skills to good use. I studied landscaping and agronomy. Then I became interested in wood, both in carpentry and in trees, how they work, pruning and so on. This is something that many people don't do, because at school they don't teach you to understand nature, only to prune it. A vegetable garden is an ecosystem. So, if you only think about the soil, you miss half the point. I've always had a vegetable garden at home. I've been able to try out hundreds of plantations. And even before the permaculture wave hit, I was already doing it without knowing it.

G&M: Tell us how you came up with this vegetable garden...

S. G.: I dug trenches for the water to flow into. This enabled us to create crop beds, which I enrich with clay and large quantities of manure, supplied by the neighbors' horses. We also use straw. But as it's a very aerated material, weeds proliferate. So we add homemade shavings made from wood that we salvage by pruning left and right. We also have a lot of bamboo, which is more of a nuisance than anything else. So we braid them to encircle the trays, and plant willow branches all around. They're growing very well and, in future, will also provide shade by forming natural arches. The aim is to sow seeds for small squashes and sweet potatoes, so as to be able to cultivate in 3D. What we're doing is a mix between market gardening and landscaping. I need to have an ecological approach, but also an artistic one, for the customers who come to walk around here. So I have to create places that are both productive and pleasurable.

G&M: Can you grow everything?

S. G.: I have no limits. I plant everything I can, and we do a lot of our own sowing, with the idea of being able to harvest our own seeds on certain types of vegetables. We're really groping our way along, gradually.

C. I.: Sometimes I come across interesting things that I'll try out. For example, chickpeas. I wanted to work with them fresh. I planted some and it was average. We started again this year, and there's only one pea per pod! It's not worth the time it takes to harvest them. We tried it, and now we've forgotten.

S. G. : Some things are very difficult to grow. But a period of experimentation can last ten years. There are a lot of factors involved. Is it a problem of water, lack of nutrients, presence of pests, is it due to the year's climate? For cabbages, we tested different locations before finding the right one. As long as we're not sure we want this vegetable, and as long as we're not sure it's impossible to grow it, we'll keep trying, but in different areas.

G&M: What influence does this vegetable garden have on your kitchen and your team?

C. I.: Everyone is involved in growing it, maintaining it and harvesting it. Involving everyone was part of the experience. The people we hired had to agree to spend three hours a week there every Thursday morning. My cooking was already very vegetarian. But the kitchen garden has changed the way I create recipes. I find inspiration by walking around in it. I go there to pick up a vegetable or a herb, then I get lost... I discover something I hadn't seen the time before, and that gives me ideas! Or maybe I'm missing an ingredient on a plate, I don't know what, and when I come here, I find it. What makes the difference is that we take just what we need. That's what makes it fresh. It's still alive.

See Gault&Millau's review, La Table de Cybèle, Boulogne-Billancourt (2 toques)