2 New Hampshire city dwellers embracing backyard food independence
We spoke to two New Hampshire families embracing food independence by growing what they need in their own backyard.
It’s one thing to grow the produce you want in a country setting and quite another to strive for nutritional independence in a city. But that’s exactly what two Nashua families are doing. While both are committed to growing food that adds flavor and freshness to their kitchen tables, they are also motivated by more personal goals. One is carrying on a family legacy. The other considers it a matter of life or death.
For Carolyn Choate, gardening is as good as (if not better than) medicine
Carolyn Choate is a two-time cancer survivor who lives in the western part of the city with her husband, where she nurtures a garden she feels is keeping her disease-free.
In 2003, at age 45, she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. Choate underwent mastectomies, radiation, and chemotherapy and survived to finish raising her two daughters, earn a graduate degree, and become an advocate and fundraiser for cancer-related causes through activism and her career as a journalist. She now works as a graduate school admissions counselor at Southern New Hampshire University, volunteers as a writing coach for the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Nashua, and writes about the health benefits of a vegan diet.

Three years ago, after finding a grape-sized lump in her throat, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of thyroid cancer and underwent two surgeries and radioactive iodine treatment. Shortly after, she read an article about the impact of an epigenetic, plant-based diet on cancer.
“I learned you can’t alter your genes, but you can alter your genetic switches through the food you eat,” she said. And that meant switching to a whole-food, fully plant-based diet. “It changed my life,” she said, “and I never looked back.”

Choate said she had always been a gardener, but used to “plant willy-nilly, things I was good at growing. I’d plant what would grow well in New Hampshire. Now my mindset is, what has the highest phytochemical profile? What gives me the best chance of staying healthy and cancer-free?”
Now she grows the herbs, fruits, and vegetables that she has researched to be the most conducive to her phytochemical diet, and those known not to absorb PFAS (forever chemicals). That includes parsley, cucumbers, kale, red and yellow tomatoes, watermelon, rosemary, thyme, Thai basil, red peppers, and scarlet runner beans, to name just a few. There are also flowers, like marigolds, which she planted as a natural insect repellent, as well as snapdragons, zinnias, and sunflowers, which add beauty.

“I try to plant the rainbow,” she said. And she does that using her own soil, supplemented with organic materials and water filtered through a reverse-osmosis system. She has also started composting. “My mantra is I don’t live to eat. I eat to live, and my garden is a big part of that.”

Lisa Guidi’s garden grows from soil that’s fertile with family history
Lisa Guidi also likes growing the healthiest food possible in her downtown Nashua yard. But her garden is also a place where she finds peace and a deep connection with her late father, who first started planting in the same spot 40 years ago.

Guidi lives with her husband, Brian, in the same house she grew up in. It’s where her parents settled when they moved here from Canada over 50 years ago, and it’s where she and her husband raised their son. Her father, a former lumberjack and lumber camp cook, started the backyard garden after he moved in. Guidi has kept it going since his death at the age of 92, five years ago. Not only does it produce food for her family, but it also yields so many happy memories for her.
She bends down to harvest a bunch of deep-green chives for that night’s dinner from the 20-by-5-foot patch. ”I watched my dad garden my whole life,” she said. “I loved watching him water the garden in the morning, pick tomatoes.

“He grew up on a farm in Canada, one of 13 children. Gardening was instinctive for him; he used to plow fields with the horses when he was just a little boy. That farm was self-sufficient. He taught me so many things. Just yesterday, I noticed yellow leaves on the tomato plants. I could hear his voice telling me to get rid of them to keep the plants healthy, and yes, I talk to him when I’m out here. I said (in French), ‘Pa. You’d be so proud of my tomatoes. I think of it as both our gardens.”
Guidi still grows rhubarb that was in her father’s garden. She’s added the vegetables, fruit, and herbs her family cooks with. Those include several varieties of tomatoes, basil, rosemary, thyme, cilantro, parsley, dill, chives, oregano, lavender, mint, corn, leeks, romaine lettuce, and cucumbers.

She also has a separate section of the backyard where she grows pink, white, orange, and purple impatiens. “We always had flowers growing up,” she said, and she pointed to a brightly colored pinwheel spinning in the flower bed. “That’s for my dad. He loved a swanky pinwheel.”
Like her father, Guidi and her husband love to cook. Brian uses the herbs in the garden to make marinades for grilling. She uses what she plants to make salads, soup, stews, pesto, and often uses her dad’s recipes, including, she said, “his famous strawberry rhubarb pudding cake,” which he brought from Canada. But sometimes she’s had to adjust those recipes. “Because my dad was a cook for lumberjacks, he didn’t know how to make small batches of anything. He never made one pie. He’d make 13 at a time.”
Guidi uses and preserves, through freezing, as much bounty from her garden as she can, but she also enjoys giving her friends and neighbors her homegrown produce, some of which comes back to her in the form of treats made by grateful recipients, such as focaccia and soups.
As she reaches down to pluck a weed near a patch of spikey rosemary, Guidi looks around the garden. “It was important for me to keep my father’s garden going. To continue the tradition,” she said. “I feel close to him when I’m out here. I find peace here.”

Learn more
For information and resources regarding backyard gardening in New Hampshire, visit the University of New Hampshire Extension offices website.