A Nature Manifesto
The picture above is my outdoors plot, far from the tidy rows of veg that you can imagine. But nature ain't tidy, and we can't control it. There is something quite philosophical with gardening: there is a lot out of your control, and you should not try to control it. One can do a bit to optimise soil health, combine plants, choose the “right” planting/sowing time, but in the end, nature decides. You may get late frosts, pests, diseases, hail, and many other. Putting too much effort into preventing these things is counter-productive, inefficient, and can be environmentally damaging.
The more products and tools we buy to amend, kill or protect, is the more we deprive nature of the opportunity to do it. Gardening is about working WITH nature, if you work against it, you will loose in the long term. This is not a call to do nothing, but a “manifesto” to think outside the usual gardening box, one that has commoditised plants and growing for the sole purpose of either looking good or tasting good. Gardening, like many activities in nature, must stay connected to nature and one has the opportunity to think about how they can contribute to nature, for example by planting pollinator friendly flowers, adding a few native shrubs, or leaving some of the onion crop to go to flower. I realise it is a very privileged position to be in, being in Orkney and having all that space, but I encourage everyone reading this to think how they can contribute, or prevent damage to nature in their own activities
The subsequent photo is frost damage on broccoli leaves, yet those plants are still growing and alive. the following photos are a sprouting garlic clove, a kale seedling that survived me being away for a month over the holidays and the darkest Orkney winter days. As a gardener, I often forget that plants want to grow, they are genetically designed to grow, they don't really need us. It’s a paradigm shift for certain, if anything, nature was better off without us, and we need to minimise our intervention and impact to what is absolutely necessary. If you want to explore that concept of nature’s resilience I highly recommend “Islands of Abandonment” by Cal Flyn.
I think it is an interesting concept to apply to life in general, just let go, but also when it comes to our environment, we need to be careful, our arrogance as humans can lead us to think that we are the ones that can fix what we've done, thus creating more problems.
Of course we need to change how we do things, but rather by reducing, reusing and recirculating resources.
NB: I fully realise that by posting and publishing photos, and using camera gear (though secondhand), I am adding to the noise and the environmental. I have made the conscious choice that this was going to be a means to express, share, and hopefully educate.
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