The Master Teacher

 In celebration of rising temperatures, I decided to watch a course on gardening. Yes, I have gardened for many years, but it sounded like fun to hear about other people's discoveries and experiences. Little did I expect this series to attack everything I believed, discounting all my experience. I tried to give it a chance. Surely there was some good there. But by the time I took the first disc out of my player, I was ready to stomp on it, break it in little pieces and throw it in the trash! Who knew that gardening could be such a controversial subject?

In my mind, the approach of this gardening course epitomizes everything that is wrong with our civilized approach to nature. The horticulturist told us to discount everything we'd learned previously, all the hard-won wisdom of our ancestors, all our own practices. Anything passed down should be labeled as old wives tales and dangerous. We are warned not to read anything about gardening if it has not been strictly controlled by double-blind studies and approved by true scientists. And especially beware of any permaculture information: it is foolish, inaccurate and outdated, and besides, permaculture is partly philosophy which cannot be scientifically proven. If you want to garden, you need to do it by rigid scientific methods, completely controlling the process. Goodness, you would think that the plants themselves play no part!

Besides making me more angry than I've been for awhile, this awful course has stirred me to put into words what I DO believe about gardening and the world of plants in general. For many years, our culture has pulled away from an awareness of the natural world, putting our focus on the human-made environment. We became more and more entranced with what we could do, inventing new technologies, new structures and machines. It was natural to focus on these things as we became less obviously dependent on plants, animals, weather, wind. It's easy to see how this happened. We were part of an exciting and tremendous "Progress". We saw that we could control more and more of our lives and the planet. Humans were in charge. The sky was the limit to our resourcefulness and innovation. 

I can totally relate to this dead-end path, for I've been part of this culture too. It is only now that climate change is forcing us to look at our lives from a wider perspective, and ecological ideas are creeping into our frame of reference. Before we blindly dash off the cliff into the sea, we are starting to grasp that our lives are actually dependent on the forces of nature that underpin all life on earth. Of course, ancient cultures have known this all along. It is not new knowledge. It was just forgotten in the mad rush to dominate nature. I hope we are now able to back away from this intent, and instead begin to notice how it is the whole of nature that is the master here. Our role is to learn how to respectfully work within it.

Plants are more than an uncontrolled green that grows through the cracks in the sidewalk. Even though we seem to have forgotten their importance lately, plants are the foundation of life. They sustain us by producing oxygen and food. Without them, we wouldn't be here. And they are so much more. They are living, breathing neighbors, communicating with each other, turning earth and air and sunlight into a green blanket covering the earth. They hold soil in place, fertilize and loosen the ground, create spaces for tiny and large animal life, hold the rain as it comes down. And they give us medicine for healing. When looking at our home from a wide perspective, it becomes clear that plant life is the sacred force that holds all in its green hands. For humans, the message is "Step back and observe." Plants are the life support of planet earth.

To me, the real lesson for us, and especially for the folks who put the gardening course together, is to let Nature inform us, not the other way around. An important permaculture principle is to take time to observe, to learn how nature is functioning. Rather than humans trying to control every possible variable, we can learn from nature. The processes of our planet have been going for millions of years, balancing, creating and refining. Our best teacher and best course is the natural world. I think I'll go out and sit in the sun now, and see what nature is doing today......