Wild Structure

You wouldn’t expect to find a jungle in the middle of Flanders, but that’s exactly what it feels like walking into Le Monde des Mille Couleurs. Across 17 hectares, Dries Delanote and his team have pioneered wild farming, permaculture and syntropic food forestry, an approach that trusts the deep wisdom of the natural world.

Here, it’s hard to tell where one crop ends and another begins. Everything overlaps in a green tapestry forming a world of a thousand colors where each microseason offers a bounty of wonders. There are thousands of edible flowers, botanical greens, plants, herbs, and hundreds of varieties of fruits and vegetables. This is wildfarming at its finest where each plant is invited to live its full expression.

A Hands Off Approach

Dries grew up on his parents’ conventional farm, which cultivated vegetables for the frozen food industry. “While I had so much respect for the pioneering energy in Flanders after World War II, which was focused on scaling agriculture and economic growth, I found myself questioning these norms and forces early on in my farming career.” Dries explains.

While traveling and spending time in Bolivia, Peru, and Senegal 25 years ago, Dries was exposed to another way of farming that put food production first. “I realized when we let nature guide us that’s where true terroir, cultivation and biodiversity starts.” he contemplates.

These methods didn't require pesticides or herbicides. Instead, insects were seen as a beneficial part of a healthy, living farm. “We respect everything that lives. When you give life to a plant, you give life to millions of other creatures, also invisible ones, such as fungi and bacteria.” Dries explains.

He took these learnings back to Belgium and started a wildfarming garden where plants and edible flours could grow rebelliously.

Bringing A Thousand  Colors to the Plate

It wasn’t long before top chefs in Ghent, Brussels and Paris heard about Dries’ work and found their way to the farm. These collaborations helped Le Monde des Mille Couleurs get off the ground and become a Label Bio-01 certified organic farm.

By viewing plants as living organisms - not products - Le Monde des Mille Couleurs unlocks a  thousand lives, tastes and colours in every plant. “Through slow, regenerative farming we increase the life cycle of a plant. It’s a perennial system instead of an annual agenda. Letting plants grow at their own pace in living soil’, generates an exceptional taste experience with beauty and nutritional values that no label can match ”

A great example is a leek. Before becoming the leek that you would know in a supermarket, there is leek asparagus. Waiting a little longer, produces the leek flower stem, and then capers, a whole new story of leek chapters. “Allowing the plant to absorb energy creates an exchange with the greater cosmos strengthening the plant's womb and enabling it to grow again.” Dries explains. “It is up to us to let the plant breathe through the microseasons and it is up to the chefs to be inspired by this botanical poetry.”

Inviting More Farmers to Go Wild

Dries hopes to encourage other farmers in his community to see the benefits of regenerative farming and to prioritize ethics over profits. His vision is for Flanders to be 100% organic in 10 years, serving as an inspiration to farms all across Europe.

From Dries point of view, regenerative farming should be seen as a public act of preserving the resilience of agriculture, nature and humanity.  “It’s not a niche or a biolabel. It’s the only way of farming for the future.” he explains.

This is what Les Monde des Mille Couleurs strives to be a role model. They have clear ethical guidelines that guide their operations focused on living in harmony with nature, putting common interests above individual ones, and inspiring each other by example. They actively share their vision with the community through guided tours, teambuilding events, workshops, traineeships, local markets, and other social projects.  “Real transition does not start with laws, but with values and mindsets.” Dries states. “Nature is common to the entire human community.”

This is also why he believes it’s so important for regenerative farmers to be recognized. “By giving farmers a voice, we highlight the importance of how food is grown—not just how it is cooked—emphasizing the role of farmers in creating a more sustainable, ethical food culture.”

Through slow, wildfarming that pulls together regeneration, permaculture, and food forestry, Dries and the team at Le Monde des Mille Couleurs shows how our futures rests on understanding, embracing, sharing and respecting nature. As Dries would say, “We are soil- and soulmates. We are nature, nature is us.”