For more than a century, the Dervaes family has made a living and a passion out of cultivation, landscaping, and innovative and green gardening practices. The family’s nursery in Belgium, Boomkwekerijen - Pepinières De Coninck-Dervaes, was a famous supplier of trees and flowering plants to European royalty.

In 1902, Arthur Dervaes and his wife Rachelle left Belgium to make a new home in the United States. After settling in Florida they established a branch of the Dervaes nursery, and passed on their love of planting and cultivation to their son, Jules Dervaes Sr.

Jules Dervaes, Sr. was employed at Chevron for 41 years, working his way up to division manager. But his true delight was in cultivation, and this passion was evident in his surroundings. Over the years, he slowly transformed his large Florida lawn into a tropical paradise. Jules Sr. gardened naturally without the use of chemicals, tilling by hand without the assistance of fancy powered tools. He was proud to "not use a drop of fertilizer," depending instead on organic matter and the original soil. With an interest in conserving water he would carefully dig recesses in the soil along the concrete curbing to allow water to soak in instead of running off.

Jules Dervaes, Jr. took his father’s teachings to heart. Coming of age during the turmoil of the late 1960s, Jules Jr. moved to New Zealand in 1973, where he homesteaded in an abandoned gold mining town and became a beekeeper. After returning to the U.S., he homesteaded on 10 acres in central Florida before moving across the country to one-fifth of an acre in Pasadena.

A period of drought in Southern California the early 1990s prompted him to remove his lawn and replace it with wildflowers, herbs. In the Fall of 2000, after hearing of the introduction of GMOs into the food supply by U.S. biotech corporations, Mr. Dervaes decided to take matters into his own hands by growing as much of his family’s food as possible.

This resolution sparked the development of his pioneering work at Path to Freedom in attractive, sustainable, and water-efficient edible landscaping that has garnered attention and study from both international news media and gardening experts. The urban homestead’s one-tenth acre garden can now produce over 6,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables annually. The Dervaes family also runs a successful business providing fresh, organic produce to local, high-end restaurants and caterers [ www.DervaesGardens.com ].

Jules Dervaes Jr.’s children work with their father, furthering his vision and the consistent expansion of their urban homestead. Their expertise in various areas of cultivation, conservation, innovation and outreach have created a bold new mission to maximize the potential of microfarming and sustainability.

Justin Dervaes has a green thumb and is passionate about propagation. His favorite pastimes include feeding his addiction to growing more strains of heirloom tomatoes and burying his face in seed catalogs. He hopes to one day have more acreage to grow even more plants.

Anaïs Dervaes spent her childhood gardening with her father and eating oranges from nearby orange groves. Among her interests are cultivation for cooking herbs, vegetables, and fruit. One day she hopes to return her country roots in the meantime she blogs about her family's daily urban homesteading adventures at www.LittleHomesteadintheCity.com as they strive to live a self-reliant life in the heart of the city.

Jordanne Dervaes devotes a great deal of her gardening focus to herbs and vegetables for drying and preserving. Because of her gifts in small livestock care, she’s also interested in plants with veterinarian applications, and is consistently exploring new treatment methods.

Through their growing knowledge gleaned from hard-won trial and error in growing and preserving their own food, installing a solar power system, home-brewing biodiesel for fuel, raising backyard farm animals, and learning back-to-basics skills, the Dervaes family has revived the old-fashioned spirit of self-reliance and resourcefulness. Online since 2001, their blog at www.LittleHomesteadintheCity.com and, more recently, social network at www.FreedomGardens.org , have inspired hundreds of thousands of others to take steps toward a more sustainable way of life.

Jules Dervaes and his family have been the subject of numerous articles in publications including The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), and Mother Earth News magazine and have been featured on ABC’s Nightline and CNN.