Build an ARK or Act of Restorative Kindness
So says Mary Reynolds, an Irish gardener, landscape designer, author and public activist, known for being the youngest contestant to win a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2002.
She currently works as an author, designer and environmentalist, and published her first book The Garden Awakening in 2016. Her career as a landscape designer and latter accomplishments inspired the biographical drama Dare to Be Wild in 2016.
On her Facebook page and group, she says:
No one is coming to save us.
Not governments.
Not corporations.
Not technology.
Certainly Not the gardening industry.
Change will not arrive from above.
It will grow from the ground up.
From us.
Nature is being erased quietly – square metre by square metre, and replaced -with decoration.
Non-native planting schemes that feed almost nothing.
Peat stripped from ancient bogs.
Soil paved over in the name of “design.”
If we want resilience, we have to build it. it’s not just about saving distant places across the world.
Start with your own patch of the planet.
Remove chemicals.
Grow food.
Plant native species.
Build communities.
Human- and more than human. A Patchwork quilt of Hope.
Build an ARK
An Act of Restorative Kindness.
The revolution starts at home.
I rewatched the movie this week and we are now planning a community garden here in Coulterville, California, out behind the Yosemite Radio station office and studio.
Volunteers needed.
One idea is to build a moon gate, common in Chinese gardens as well as Irish ones, out back as the pedestrian entrance to the garden. We can build one out of wood instead of stone.
This is the original moon gate from the Gold Medal design in 2002.
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