When Chris and Aria Adjani first moved to Sonoma County from Los Angeles four years ago, they thought they wanted to be farmers. Chris, a mobile interface designer, and Aria, an actress and chef, had been looking for farmland for about a year and a half.
They’d considered buying in Europe, perhaps in Italy, but then they visited a friend in Napa Valley and, on a day trip, drove to Healdsburg. And like so many before them, they fell in love with the place.
Eight months later, they had a house in Healdsburg, 24 acres of undeveloped land on the floor of Dry Creek Valley, and a vague but inspiring vision of the kind of paradise they wanted to build.
“When we first started, it was our idea that we were going to create a farm,” Chris Adjani said, “but I’m a creative director— that’s what I did for living — and I decided to design a garden instead. Farming is more about making a product. That’s not us. Noci Sonoma is a garden where all the things around you just happen to be edible. We’re not selling a product; we’re selling an experience.”
Noci Sonoma may be the first of its kind — a membership garden that combines a sophisticated u-pick operation with the pleasures of a bucolic country club — minus the golf and tennis. Noci Sonoma’s website calls it “an edible garden adventure.”
“I don’t think there’s a garden like this anywhere else,” Adjani said. “Usually, you go to a garden, and you can look at it, but you’re not supposed to touch it. Here, if you want something — flowers or fruit or vegetables — you take it, but unlike a regular u-pick, you can also hang around and just enjoy the beauty of the garden.”
Noci Sonoma, which was closed for a year and half while the property was under construction, reopened two months ago and began offering a limited number of new memberships.
Members pay several hundred dollars a month for the privilege of visiting and harvesting the gardens that Adjani and his small army of gardeners, landscapers, and construction workers are laboring to create.
There are two levels of membership: Noci Black, which costs $350 a month, entitles members to unlimited visits, 100 pounds of produce per month, and four free guests per visit; Noci Green, which costs $200, entitles members to two visits a month, 50 pounds of produce, and two free guests per visit. If you don’t use up your vegetable allotment in one month, it rolls over to the next month.
These are discounted membership prices, Adjani says, because the gardens are still in the process of creation. The price will go up as the gardens mature and are completed.
Ultimately, Adjani says, there will be 15 separate walled gardens on the 24-acre property. The first of the gardens was started two years ago and is grown in, with mature trees, attractively laid-out beds of flowers and vegetables, and walls made of three different varieties of thornless blackberries on wire trellises.
Several other gardens have been planted as well, and though these gardens are newer and less defined, they are producing vegetables and fruit at a furious pace. In one 50-foot square planted to sweet peppers, thousands of red and yellow peppers glinted in the sunlight, and beyond that, fat pumpkins peeked from beneath massive leaves.
What members and Adjani’s own family don’t pick is given away to several nonprofits, including the local food pantry and the Ceres Project in Sebastopol. “We just donated 700 pounds of beets to the Ceres Project, and another 700 pounds of beets and other vegetables to Farm to Pantry,” Adjani said.
In spite of its striking bounty, much of the structural design that will give Noci Sonoma its character still lives mostly in Chris Adjani’s head, though he’s practiced at sharing his vision with potential members who stop by for tours.
The trellised walls that will eventually give architectural definition to the beds of produce have been laid out and planted, but the plantings are so young that the walls still have to be imagined. Ditto for the 660-foot-long jasmine-covered trellis tunnel that members will use to access the gardens — you can see the skeleton structure of the tunnel in a series of tall welded archways.
There will also be a large pond and water garden, which is still under construction, and 18 shaded seating areas, where members can take cover from Dry Creek Valley’s summer sun and admire the garden view. An on-site kitchen and lounge for members only is also a part of the three-year plan for the property.
The first building on the property — a large modernist barn — is set to be finished in December. Set at the front of the property, the barn will serve as a check-in area for club members, where they’ll pick up their baskets and clippers. It will also include a small café that will be open to the public, serving dishes prepared by Aria from produce from the gardens.
The barn’s main feature will be a vast display wall, showing off all the fruits and vegetables that the gardens are currently producing. Each item will be marked with the number of the garden where that item can be found. The gardens will only be available to members for harvesting, though there will be regular garden tours.
Noci Sonoma had 150 members before they closed a year and a half ago, and now that they’ve reopened, they’re working their way back up to that. Some members come to harvest and some just come to enjoy the gardens.
“When we were planning the garden, we broke it down to four different types of people that would come here,” Adjani said.
“The first group are people like me — I am just a guy who wants to be in a garden, maybe taste some grapes as I walk, but I’m not really interested in harvesting. I just want to hang out look at the flowers and the birds. The second group are people like my wife, who is here to harvest. She’s looking for ingredients for what she’s going to cook. The third kind of member is people who do this as a family kind of thing, somewhere to take the kids; and finally, there are the deep gardeners, who want to come here and hang out with our gardeners, talk about plants and learn how to do some of the things they see here.”
Member Kasey Patte probably falls into the second category. She drops by once a week, often with her mother in tow, to harvest whatever looks good.
“My husband and I discovered Noci Sonoma just by driving by,” said Patte, who lives in Geyserville. “We stopped in and took a tour and fell in love with the property. And since we live close by, it made a lot of sense for us. Now I come every week and get fresh produce. It’s been super fun, and it forces you to eat seasonally. Plus, you get inspired by what’s in your basket.”
Adjani eventually hopes to have more than a thousand members, but he knows he’ll eventually have to put a cap on membership.
“That’s one of the challenges of this project: keeping the garden looking beautiful while people are picking things and making sure there’s enough produce for members, for the café and to give away. It’s an experiment really,” he said with a smile. “We’ll see how it goes.”
Noci Sonoma plans to have an official grand opening on May 25, 2019.
