permaculture principles — Blog — Index For The Next World

"Everything Gardens"

This is a permaculture principle that sometimes seems confusing at first. What does it really mean to garden?

According to this principle, one definition is that to garden is to change the environment right around you. This redwood tree has changed its environment wildly - creating habitat, shade, impacts on the soil beneath it, sound absorption with its bark. A spot for a swing. And once, a climbing spot for a high school student who, while us teachers had turned our backs for a moment, managed to clamor all the way up to the top of the tree, and then laughed at us from way up there when we couldn't find him 😏 .

What would it mean to think of every living thing as a gardener? In other words, to acknowledge that every living thing modifies its environment? To understand gardening not as dominion or control, as it has been twisted and deployed in dominant colonial exploitation of people and land, but rather as intentional interaction, conscious impact/modification in a web of relationships with other, non-human gardeners who are also interacting and changing the space around them? What if we humans aren't actually unique as gardeners- what if we belong to a much bigger world of them?

As permaculture designer and educator Lisa DePiano said in a permaculture teacher training course, "Permaculture is bringing back into relationship what has been separated."

Domination and control separate and exploit. Trying to have no impact also separates us- from the ecosystem, and from the reality of our belonging in, and constant impact on, that ecosystem. This separation then makes it hard to take responsibility (response-ability) for our interaction or impact .

The truth is, we always have an impact. Can we do so intentionally and iteratively? Humbly and collaboratively, with the environment around us, towards mutual benefit? How can gardening, in concert with other human and beyond-human gardeners, integrate, reconnect?

The more interconnections in a web, the more resilience remains even if one of them breaks. Everything gardens. What/who do you notice "gardening" near you today?