Organic Landscape Design

A large part of my acre is in grass – all kinds of grass – whatever grass decides to grow there. If I were to use this place to produce for the market the incentive would be to plow fence line to fence line and then plant a few high value crops. I might be able to make a profit but I would be diminishing the life process of this place. This place would no longer be able to provide nutrients, beneficial insects, and native pollinators – all of that would need to be imported.

Instead, I let most of the acre be what it wants to be – grass. I spend nothing on it except my effort to cut it once a year and move it into my garden. In return for the welcome I give to all the plants and creatures who choose to live in this place, this place gives me all those things – nutrients, beneficial insects, and native pollinators. Those things are inherent in the transactions that occur here. Each transaction is an exchange of resources and as the transactions occur and re-occur those resources accumulate in this place.

In this place we support more plants and creatures contributing to more and more transactions that occur and reoccur. Each cycle feeds the following cycle and the builds more resources. We increase fertility over time instead of depleting fertility.

So what do I mean by place? In only a very superficial sense it is this acre where I live and where I have “property rights”. Property rights give me the human authority to determine what activities will take place on this acre – whether we will allow activities that diminish life processes here – whether we will invest in enhancing life processes here. But this acre is not an island, and even if it were, the life process playing out here would still be directly connected to a much larger place.

Think of it instead as a focal point of a set of transactions. This place that I inhabit – in which I try to be aware of all the forces playing out around and through me – is the set of transactions that I can affect and that affect me.

We are aware that the wind blowing in over the mountains carries dust from as far as the Gobi Desert. The dust settles on the leaves of the trees here and the rain washes it into the soil – nutrient and pollutant. Where water flows, it leaches nutrients/pollutants - where water stands, the leached nutrients/pollutants settle out and become part of that place. In my place, we import water from the other side of the mountains, 'purify' it with chlorine and distribute it to millions of people who could not live here without that water.

So, I think, that place is not so much that which we can locate on a map – it is this focal point I am trying to articulate. And, within any such set of focused transactions we can decide to simplify, and reduce the number of interactions or we can decide to add more and more kinds of transactions. The one approach depletes resources over time – the other approach accumulates resources over time.

To be fully aware of the forces playing out around and through us includes the smallest of transactions in a place. In my place there are billions of bacteria, millions of miles of mycelia, hundreds of thousands of worms, and thousands of other kinds of tiny creatures all dedicating their lives to supporting the rest of life in this place. It is these smallest of organisms that cycle life, taking old life and making it ready to be new life, holding the resources that life creates and that support life in this place.

It is on the base of these smallest of transactions upon which all of the grass and trees, fruits and vegetables, birds and mammals, and my family stand. These smallest of transactions take place in the soil, create the soil – are the soil. So I don't spend much time composting; I mulch. Instead of painstakingly building compost piles of precise mixtures of carbon and nitrogen and periodically turning them to produce the nutrients my fruits and vegetables need, I lay the grass I cut around my plants and the soil organisms make those nutrients while being soil. I feed the soil and the soil feeds the plants in this place.

If we rob the soil of last year's leaves and grass, if we plow fence line to fence line, if we spread poisons, we reduce the number of organisms, the number of species of organisms and the number of transactions in a place. Then life itself, the ecosystem, is diminished in that place. In my place, we honor the gift of the smallest among us.

I do not know of a corollary to this honoring of gifts in human economic thought. Economic thought is primarily from the point of view of the market – the interplay of supply and demand – the competition for resources. But there is this other dynamic that is neither addressed by laissez-faire nor welfare state economic beliefs. This dynamic is that when more people contribute to the pie the pie is bigger and there is more to go around. It is a false choice that the strong are entitled to their bigger share.  It is also false to assume that the strong must give away some of their share so that the weak can survive. We all have a gift. We all benefit when more people can give of their gift and we all suffer when others are prevented from giving of their gift.

I do not know of a corollary to this honoring of the gifts in any philosophical tradition. Jesus said that the poor will always be with us and we interpret that as part of God's will – that we are called to charity for those less fortunate than ourselves. And charity may prevent the worst of tragedies but it does not seem to rescue people from useless, meaningless lives; it does not generally facilitate the giving of one's gift.

But this honoring of gifts – honoring the gift of the strong and powerful as well as the gift of the weak and powerless – honoring the gift of the least among us – this too makes the difference between a community experiencing economic expansion and a community in decline. This is because an economy is a set of transactions focused on a place.  If there are more transactions and more kinds of transactions, the economy is growing and expanding; if there are fewer transactions or fewer kinds of transactions then the economy is in decline.

To be fully aware of the forces playing out around and through us means that we will be aware of those gifts around us that remain ungiven.

Continue with Living in Place - Part 3