Imagine what our lives throughout history would be like without the farmers, gardeners and landscapers?
Our farmers have provided us with food for people and animals. Gardeners and landscapers have created beautiful urban and rural landscapes around homes, businesses, schools and communities, as well as those magnificent gardens and landscapes surrounding palaces, parliament buildings and large estate properties.
They also have played an environmental role, such as creating habitat and food for birds and pollinators, restoring damaged spaces back to a healthy state and ensuring seed diversity and sovereignty over our food supply.
The diversity of gardens created on this earth, ranging from desert landscapes to lush tropical paradises, offer us some common ground which helps to erase the religious, cultural and economic lines that can divide us.
However, as much as they can create and provide, they can also take away. There is still an enormous amount of toxic and poisonous substances being used that destroy the living soil and contaminate our water supplies.
There are seeds being planted that have built-in, non specifies-specific insecticides and pesticides that are destroying not only the health of our pollinators, but also human and animal health. Water resources are being managed improperly, creating shortages in other necessary supply areas.
Precious topsoil is being eroded on a massive scale and plants are being purchased that require huge volumes of water to survive. Landscape fabrics are suffocating the soil food web, and tons and tons of organic material in the form of yard, farm and kitchen scraps are wasted every year.
Healthy, living soil is the most biodiverse ecosystem we know of, and the second biggest carbon sink next to the oceans and, without it, life could not be sustained on this planet.
Today, in so many places throughout the world, soils are tired, overworked, depleted, sick and poisoned by poor care and synthetic chemicals, and the quality of our food and water has suffered, along with our health. However, if this worldwide community of gardeners, farmers and landscapers (and that’s you and me too) decide to play an active and committed role as stewards of this earth, we could, collectively, help to create a healthy and vibrant future for generations to come. Around the world, scientists, soil biologists, environmentalists and others are spreading the word that so many of our problems our planet is facing today such as pollution, deforestation, plant diversity, soil loss and even climate change, can be solved in a garden. This is such an empowering message for all of us to hear.
Jacob Bronowski, biologist and writer of the BBC television series The Ascent of Man, states that: “Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding”.
We could then harmonize human designs with nature’s design by looking to nature as our teacher to learn how to create living, healthy soil, manage and utilize water more efficiently, learn which plants grow within each type of ecosystem and understand the plant’s natural protection from diseases and pests. This would completely change the way we tend the land, and it would free us from the unnecessary use of toxic substances and dramatically reduce our consumption of water.
If we tenders of the land could step up to the plate to embrace the motto of “do no harm” to our earth and to its inhabitants – both above and below the ground – then we can individually and collectively play a part in shifting the course of humanity through knowledge, understanding and purchasing power – one garden, landscape and farm at a time. Remember the famous quote by Margaret Mead, who said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Perhaps we can begin by looking into our own backyards before this gardening season begins, and make those changes that will contribute to a more healthier, cleaner and vibrant planet we, and so many other creatures, call home.