Making peace with the garden
“Men will never rest till they’ve spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”
Our relationship with nature is a violent one. Simply stated, people seem to be at war with the natural world. A glaring example of this brutal violence is “mountaintop removal” coal mining in Appalachia, where mountains are blown apart to access coal seams and valleys are filled with the rubble. Industrial agriculture, manufacturing, logging and, in fact, every sector of human activity, provides plenty of evidence that humans are in a lopsided fight with nature, systematically destroying ecosystems, exterminating species and poisoning the air, land and water. It seems to me the battlefield extends into our own backyards. I would like to suggest a positive response to this war on nature while offering a practical way to begin making peace with the garden.
The first phase of a housing “development” on southern Vancouver Island
It is important to see that the war on nature is being fought in our home gardens. Sometimes the harm is simply a form of collateral damage. Nature tends to get in the way. While we don’t plan to hurt wild creatures or ecosystems, if they stand between us and our goals the wild creatures generally lose. Unintended harm sometimes occurs because we don’t have enough knowledge or because we are working with misinformation. An example of this might be the practice of roto-tilling garden beds. The goal of roto-tilling is, of course, to prepare the soil for planting by efficiently creating soft, homogeneous beds. Unfortunately many gardeners simply don’t understand the complexity and importance of the soil ecosystem and are unaware of the extensive damage being done to the soil’s structure and to earthworms, nematodes, soil arthropods and micro-organisms, including the fungi associated with plant roots.
But if some of the damage is unintended, the backyard battle against nature often escalates into overt warfare. An obvious example is our readiness to use pesticides to fight the insects and plants we consider enemies. No doubt garden pests are a challenge, but our deep suspicion that every “bug” is a threat betrays a belief that wild creatures are inherently hostile. And this fundamental belief—that the forces of nature oppose us—is a root cause of much environmental damage. Let me explain.
We are “storied” people and we live out of our narratives. Our view of the world and our ideas about what is important, how the world works and what constitutes the good life, are captured in the stories we listen to and the stories we repeat. We are surrounded by these stories and we live inside them. They are embedded in our music, literature, film, television and advertising. These stories permeate our conversations and come to life in our day to day choices and behaviors. Stories shape our thinking, especially with many repetitions. This point is well illustrated by advertising which typically portrays nature as a malevolent force. Home gardeners, for example, are encouraged to purchase gadgets and chemicals to do battle with the enemy which is moss, insects, fallen leaves, weeds, ice and snow, and so on. The goal is to conquer and subdue nature in order to create homes and gardens that fit the manicured ideal. This theme is repeated in movies, television and books so that the dominant story about our relationship with nature is a narrative of conflict.
This is where I start to feel uncomfortable. I find it easy to point fingers at the large corporations or governments responsible for so much ecological destruction. But it is troubling when I display similar thinking (and conduct) in my own garden. Good news... there is a way forward.
I think we need to start talking about ending the war and deliberately choosing to make peace with nature. A great place to start acting is in our own backyards. I can think of few better models for this peace-making initiative than the creation of a pollinator garden. A pollinator garden features the flowering plants that provide nectar and pollen for pollinators—those animals that support flower reproduction by moving pollen around. Pollinators include bees, butterflies and other insects as well as hummingbirds. Here in the Pacific Northwest the essential pollinators are mostly insects, in particular the wild bees. A well designed pollinator garden will offer shelter and provide pollinators with nesting sites and a source of water. And a pollinator-friendly garden will be free of insecticides, herbicides and other lethal chemicals.
“If and when we decide that we want the other creatures to continue sharing the Earth with us, we will have to leave room for them.”
Designing a pollinator garden is an intentional act. It involves researching and selecting plants that can provide pollinators with food and shelter. But a more important requirement, for most of us, is a fundamental shift in our way of thinking about the natural world. There are probably four critical ways our thinking needs to change.
The first shift is a movement away from our fundamental distrust of nature. Many of us have a deep seated belief that the natural world is hostile. We don’t trust the wild creatures and we assume they pose a threat. It is hard to believe and accept that creation is truly good. In practical terms this means conceding that most insects are allies and relatively few will cause us problems.
A second shift is a move towards hospitality. Instead of exterminating insects we welcome them into our gardens! For many of us, this is a major shift in thinking.
The most familiar pollinators are honey bees. Honey bees are an introduced species but there are 4000 species of wild bees in North America. Many are in serious trouble.
A third challenge is to embrace complexity and disorder. Although a sterile, tidy yard is the ideal presented in most garden magazines, when we understand the ecological importance of native plants, fallen leaves, underbrush and even dead tree limbs we might be persuaded to re-wild parts of our garden.
A fourth challenge (or opportunity) is to cultivate an interest in pollinators and other wildlife. As children many of us learned to be afraid of bees, wasps, spiders, ants and other creeping creatures. Many people find six and eight-legged creatures repulsive. Showing interest in these animals is an enormous shift in thinking; appreciating their beauty is a radical act. But getting to know these amazing animals can lead to fascination and delight, and may even help us recovery our sense of wonder.
Establishing a pollinator garden is an act of ecological restoration, albeit on a small scale. The goal of ecological restoration is to return damaged or degraded sites to something resembling their natural state. A critical step in restoring the integrity and health of these ecosystems is reintroducing native plant species. Of course even a well designed pollinator garden bears little resemblance to a “natural” ecosystem but adding native plants that can provide food and shelter for wild pollinators is a strong move in the right direction.
Camas (Camassia quamash and C. leichtlinii) and Spring-gold (Lomatium utriculatum). These flowers are native to Garry Oak ecosystems and are important food plants for wild bees.
Establishing a pollinator garden is also an act of ecological reconciliation. Reconciliation begins with awareness and an acknowledgment of the harm that has been done. Reconciliation also requires a serious effort to make things right, repairing the damage to the best of our abilities and ensuring that no further injury is being done. Gardeners have an important part to play in this turn towards ecological reconciliation and supporting pollinators is not a trivial act. Although the benefits to local pollinators may seem modest, they are real, and may be more significant than we think, especially for species living on the precarious edge of survival.
There are other benefits to taking action in our own backyards. Establishing a pollinator garden is a hopeful act in a world that is full of bad news. Rather than depending on politicians to fix the environmental crisis, our action underlines our own agency and the significance of individual decision making. It also serves as a signal to the broader community that we are moving in a different direction. And as we influence others we can become messengers of ecological reconciliation.
Some folks might argue it is enough to leave nature alone and let her fix herself. However, the ecological damage we have caused is so immense, and the natural regenerative capacity of most ecosystems has been so severely degraded, that nature needs our active support. Humans have been the cause of tremendous ecological damage so humans must become active participants in restoration. This support involves changing both our talk and our walk. We need to re-frame our relationship with the natural world, putting forward an alternative to the narrative of conflict. We need to invoke the language of ecological peacemaking rather than the language of warfare to support a positive, healing discourse. This involves intentionally shifting our thinking, away from a fundamental distrust of nature towards an attitude of hospitality, demonstrating by our choices that wild creatures are actually welcome in our world.
RESOURCES:
These are a few of the writers that have influenced my thinking on ecological restoration and reconciliation:
Kara Moses, Rewilding the land and ourselves in Permaculture, (102) Winter 2019, p 4-7.
Randolph Haluza-DeLay, Making peace with all creation in Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 2012, (24:2) p 171-178.
My comments on the importance of narratives are shaped by:
N.T. Wright, Knowledge: Problems and varieties in The New Testament and the People of God (1992), p 31-46.
“Because we are undeniably part of Nature, what we do to the land we do to ourselves. If we damage the land, we also damage ourselves. And so it follows that if we heal the land, we heal ourselves.”