I wonder how many people
can use their thumbs better than they can climb a tree...
What a world we've made for ourselves
we can move mountains without even moving our bums off our chairs
we watch it all - framed in the glow of a screen
control at a push of a button
But still the air that we breathe
has been breathed by dinosaurs
the water coursing through us
has flown around the world many times over
We are recent arrivals and guests on this planet
Nature has been at it since life began on earth:
3.8 Billion years of Experiment and Experience...
adapting strategies, solving problems, finding connections, better arrangements
turning even Death into More Life (and more, and more...)
expanding in diversity and function,
complex balances, harmonies, cycles, transitions...
melodies flowing in a vast symphony
we can look at nature again, and find the ancient solutions
Science, technology, design, engineering,
many of us are starting to turn from the bad habits and bad strategies
that seems to be turning our planet into a fireball
Realizing that every problem we now face
has propably been dealt with by nature before
technologies are being developed now -
like - designing buildings to harvest water
by looking at how a desert beetle catches water in it's wings
like - wallpaper for buildings with cells like inside a tree
so water can "pump" through the walls naturally
like looking at how seashells grow
and learning how to make concrete from carbon dioxide,
very high-tech stuff.
We don't all have to be rocket scientists,
or even cavemen magicians.
We can be humble students,
learning from every small thing around us.
Have a Jam in the Wild.
Jam WITH the Wild.
---
MAN IN THE GARDEN.
He's heavily armed.
Where's the weeds?
Here's a dandelion.
Garden Man
"Hey, you look foreign, what are you doing here?"
Dandy
"Uh, just working this soil here
It's pretty hard, but I'm getting there..."
Garden Man (like a robot)
"Out with all immigrants!"
He slashes Dandy with his lawnmower-tank
He's going crazy, sweating, bleeding, groaning
swinging around so much machinery and spraying all sorts of sprays...
SOMEWHERE IN THE WILD
smokey bare soil... the aftermath...
dusty air... nothing...
some rain..
and some weeds start growing.
where nothing else would grow,
these tough guys volunteer,
do the hard work,
do the repair...
and slowly cover the landscape,
channel and mine the soil
bring the life back
and the birds start playing in the bushes
and shit out their seedy little shits
and some trees find their way into the landscape...
more birds come, they play in the trees,
shit out more trees,
and soon some taller trees grow...
the forest floor looks different...
more shady now, mushrooms growing...
and lots of wildlife visiting every day.
a full orchestra playing together
filling up more and more with new sounds and melodies
--- Part 2 ---
WALKING IN THE WILD, ASKING NATURE QUESTIONS
why is this, what is that?
why is this happening?
what is this plant doing here?
How can we bring nature back as wildly as the weeds,
without having to battle and sweat and break our backs?
[ FOREST ]
If we can understand the basic pattern of how a forest grows,
we can mimic that and design it from the start:
WE START THE ORCHESTRA ONCE,
and speed up the movement.
We replace the weeds with plants that perform the same functions -
preparing the soil and providing cover -
but plants that we choose and that we can use
We place all the final forest trees between the wild pioneers
and every season prune back some volunteers to make space
for the final forest to take over.
(We can look at how to start a food forest in a lot more detail another time)
Gardening wildly, we leave nature to most of it.
(because nature does it best)
Interfere less and less,
harvest and enjoy more and more.
---
WHAT ABOUT WATER?
Nature doesn't have people walking around with hoses and watering cans. How does it grow? Why doesn't it wilt and die in the first heat like my garden does?
First of all, the plants that survive in the wild survive because they can handle the climate, and a lot of the plants we try to grow are from different climates, a lot of it from Europe or England...
Wild plants usually cover each other a lot better. Soil exposed in the sun dies quickly, in the wild, where there's sun, some plant will eventually fill up the space. We should plant things more closer together, use plants to shelter each other, cover the ground. Trees and shrubs catch a lot of moisture, harvest it really well and also protect the soil from evaporation.
Fertile places in nature are usually where water flow gets slowed or trapped.
A lot more water soaks into the soil
rather than running away downhill.
(An estuary is more fertile than a flash flood...)
We can help the water flow slower,
trap it and store it along the way
and soak all the landscape with water.
With the amount of rainwater falling on the roofs and just running over it
we can fill up a lot of tanks, ponds, unglazed clay pots buried in the soil, and so on.
and have plenty of overflow to distribute in the soil.
---
SPEAKING OF SOIL and FERTILITY...
Let us visit a strange place called the rhizosphere.
We are very very small, smaller than the layer between root and soil.
Every plant at every root tip - opens up a food court right outside, in the rhizosphere - and the critters in the soil come and eat, eat each other...
burst and poo and die - every sort of dirty thing happens...
and this is the yummy stuff that the plant eats.
So - the rhizosphere is the dirty place where plant and soil organisms
exchange their excrement and dead bits.
It works.
In nature, everything cycles. Growing things above drops to the soil,
gets eaten and pood back to the soil...
It can pass all the way through the food chain and back to the soil somewhere.
Let more volunteers and pioneers into the place,
have lots of roots to do some dirty business, lots of plant matter.
Have as much matter to feed the soil as you take out to feed yourself
Leaves and sticks should keep adding to the soil just like a forest.
Attracting birds or keeping poultry
Farming with worms
Making compost
Turning every scrap back to fertility
and feeding it back to the garden
JUST MAKE SURE THE PARTY IN THE SOIL
KEEPS GOING WILD
---
A QUICK LOOK AT INSECTS AND ANIMALS:
nature has a cleanup crew...
the cleanup crew is making sure that only the strong survives.
a lot of plants we might try to grow, don't do so well in this environment
we fertilize too much and water too much - or too little
(they need constant special care)
and soon the cleanup crew takes notice and little bugs start having a feast.
Start a naturally healthy soil life
and put in plants that will be stronger in our environment
more natural, less weaklings and mutants,
more mixed up smells and patterns and colours,
more plants attracting more insects - the predators (they're cool),
flowers for bees and butterflies, medicinal herbs and shrubs.
make rock piles and hiding places for lizards,
trees and perches and boxes for birds,
ponds for frogs, ponds for ducks,
welcome the spiders, praying mantis, dragonflies
MORE HABITAT FOR MORE DIVERSITY -
turn pests into a food chain.
---
It is easy to turn problems into solutions,
to design more thoughtfully and garden wildly.
Designs to find good relationships,
to fit things and arrange things to work together better
to understand patterns that happen in nature
and mimic them in the way we design and work our gardens.
Every edge is a possibility
a place where things meet,
where transactions happen,
(not just a war-zone with a barrier in-between).
---
