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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Gardening is about more than vegetables
  • Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:26:39 -0600


Gardening is about more than vegetables
Published Oct 1 2010 by Ecological Gardening by Adrian Ayres Fisher
http://www.ecologicalgardening.net/2010/10/strengthening-biotic-community.html

Strengthening the Biotic Community

>From Wild OnesFrom Wild OnesPerhaps you have heard that, according to a new
>scientific report (See Guardian article here), one fifth of plants face
>extinction, primarily because of human destruction of habitat, which
>includes logging, agriculture and building new infrastructure. As an
>ecological gardener, I take this news as a personal call to action, since my
>vocation is to help increase biodiversity, through gardening, teaching, and
>volunteering for conservation activities. When I heard that news, I thought
>of the great conservationist Aldo Leopold’s succinct distillation of his
>“land ethic:”

“A thing is right when it tends to strengthen the integrity, stability and
beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Leopold’s statement has, in some circles, become something of a cliché, and
in other places has been criticized either for not going far enough or for
not leaving room for humans. (See this essay at the Yale Forum of Religion
and Ecology). I believe its epigrammatic, prescriptive statement of the deep
morality at the center of environmentally-ethical behavior applies not only
to wild areas, or to landscape preservation and restoration, but like Michael
Rosenzweig’s more recent concept of reconciliation ecology, applies equally
to cities and suburbs. The land ethic, like nature, doesn’t stop at the
garden gate and doesn’t go away because we “own” a piece of land. Recognize
it or not, like it or not, we are part of the biotic community. Fortunately,
many gardeners have a natural understanding of this. Yet it bears repeating.

My first, biggest gardening question is always, “how will my gardening help
the biotic community?” which means the ecosystem and all the plants and
animals—all the living things, including me —and the habitats they
simultaneously live in and form. And I ask further questions: Am I making my
garden so that it is of a piece with the surrounding native ecosystem
(integrity)? So that it could function without me for a period of time
(stability)? So that it not only pleases my human senses, but also those of
bees or hummingbirds, and demonstrates elegance in the way the parts function
together (beauty)? Even though I don’t know enough to understand even a tiny
fraction of the millions of relationships that structure the biotic
community--or to put it another way, all the inputs, outputs, flows and
processes that form this complex nonlinear system--nevertheless, I strive to
learn and act mindfully.





  • [Livingontheland] Gardening is about more than vegetables, Tradingpost, 10/05/2010

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