Gardening to remember

Becoming kin

Jan 16, 2025

Hello everyone. How is your 2025 going so far? However it might be, I hope you found some time for rest and ease and felt the embrace of warmth and care over the holiday period and during these winter days. My desire is always to withdraw and go slow over January, though this month has felt restlessly full and is racing by already. This morning I noticed the cyclamen and hellebores out under the old magnolia and lots of blunt, green shoots emerging from bulbs. Always a sign for me in this garden that things are beginning to stir and it won’t be long before the flood of energy bursts forth.
Today I’m sharing a piece that I first wrote approaching two years ago for a talk at the Horniman Plant Fair. I also gave a version of it at the Design Museum (for the Growing Together project) and for a Kin Structures event. I offered a truncated form of it and it was included last year in the book, A Garden Manifesto, edited by Olivia Laing & Richard Porter.
I’m sharing it here now because I have a piece brewing that I’d like to post soon, and to my mind it makes more sense in the context of/as an evolution of this piece.
It’s a long-ish read (I recently learnt that research shows the average attention span on any screen is 40 seconds or less!) so you might like to grab a cuppa…

Gardening to remember, by Sui Searle

One of the things that preoccupies me is: What do I do this for anyway (this gardening thing, that is)? How might I be doing things better or different? Healthier for me, for my kin (both human and more-than-human), and for the planet?

I’m particularly interested in the fundamental issue - or story - of separation that we tell ourselves. Something that, once you see it, you could say is at the root of many of the issues facing us today: from the climate crisis, to biodiversity loss, to our broken food system, to our health crisis, to our gross over-consumption-driven society, even to burn-out and worsening mental health.

My journey into gardening began 20 years ago, when I retrained as a career-changer. I was miserable in an office job in the city, wondering how I could possibly bear to spend the rest of my days writing reports and attending seemingly endless strategy meetings. I felt flattened and dulled by the greyness and sterility of corporate, office life; weighed down by all the glass and concrete surrounding me in an urban environment. I had this yearning for something with more meaning. I wanted to feel as though I was making a positive difference. I wanted to be more outdoors, to feel connected to the seasons, landscape, the earth, the natural world: I wanted more connection to “nature”.

When I started my gardening career though, there were many things to contend with that I hadn’t factored for and feelings of being, I suppose, regularly compromised. As gardeners we didn’t always do what was best for “nature”. As with everyone and everything else, we were driven by a seeming scarcity of time and money and a belief that “nature” was something there to be dominated and controlled and put to use for our needs.

I had this creeping feeling that the thing I thought I had changed careers to do - to be greener, to be more in touch with nature - was not turning out to be the reality. Everything, in the end, seemed to come down to time and money and manipulating, abusing or extracting from “nature” for our own ends and often for little more than a sense of style, aesthetics, standards, politeness or conformity - and to make a profit.

Mowing lawns (veritable resource/energy intensive & hungry monocultures) constantly for the sake of tidiness and appearances. Trimming hedges at times when you wouldn’t out of choice - in bird nesting season for example. Putting in metres of irrigation systems for wealthy clients who didn’t have time or inclination to care for their garden but wanted a high enough status, lush, outdoor garden room to accompany expensive and immaculate homes. Endless plastic bought and discarded with little thought or care. Pesticides and herbicides used as standard gardening practice. Ripping up the existing or the old just to lay down something new and shiny with little thought for waste, emissions, resources, repurposing or salvaging. I wasn’t really sure how any of this was working with or for the benefit of “nature” and of course, it often wasn’t.

Things have started changing, slowly. There is a greater awareness, mostly of environmental concerns. We are more willing to let lawns and verges grow. People are beginning to see “weeds” for the invaluable plants that they are… But it wasn’t until only relatively recently that I began to really understand a truth that I think I had long been feeling in my body. That our very view, our way of seeing and being in the world - is out of alignment and making us behave in questionable ways. It is what was fuelling this sense of disconnection that so many of us feel.

The myth of separation

Something really shifted for me in particular after listening to a talk given by Rebecca Hosking (a regenerative farmer based in Devon), which she gave for the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) a few years ago. She talked about how language frames our way of thinking and affects our behaviour. Words such as “nature”, “weeds” and “pests” is the language of mastery and dominance. It reflects our broken, destructive, abusive relationship with the rest of life on Earth.

Our behaviour is influenced by our thought processes, which is shaped by the words and stories and metaphors we use. She said how in many indigenous cultures there is no separation between humans and “nature”. In fact many do not even have an equivalent word.

Things began to fall into place in my mind.

As humans, we like to make meaning, create myths and tell stories. They affect how we see ourselves, the world and also how we behave: more essentially, how we choose to live in relation to each other, the land, even our food and governance systems. Alnoor Ladha (lecturer, writer and speaker) talks about how our collective imaginary has been completely shaped and limited by neo-capitalism, how every aspect of our lives is mediated by capital/money. He talks about the importance of being good students of our culture and understanding the context within which we are enmeshed and that this starts by understanding our ontology: or our theory of being - the way we understand reality.

This makes complete sense to me. To try to understand the root of something.

Why do we behave the way we do? What stories are we telling ourselves?

One of the fundamental stories we tell ourselves, or myths that we believe, is one of separation and division.

This idea that there is this thing called “nature”, that we are separate from, is our dominant ontology (or our nature of being - our way of seeing the world). Humans are seen as separate from and superior to “nature”.

We see this at the birth of modern/Western science. During the Enlightenment: white, male, European thinkers decided what “modern” humans look like and how they live based on their own bias, assumptions and in their own image. And anyone who didn’t live up to that image was seen as being innately inferior. A greater separation from “nature” was seen as a sign of superiority, of human progress, even of evolution. Whilst people who lived closer to nature were seen as less “developed”.

This bias, this colonial idea of “modern” and the separation of humans from “nature”, is still pervasive to this day and affects, even used to justify, how we judge and oppress other cultures and people. This language of separation is our dominant language. Just as we are also dominated by a rationalist view of the world and a belief that the world can be reduced into comprehension by the human mind.

I’m interested in how, with greater awareness, might gardening help to heal some of our wounds, narratives and disconnection. And perhaps point us towards different ways of seeing and being in this world.

Practicing liberation

Ladha talks about understanding the ontology within which we are enmeshed and practicing a liberation ontology. Like so much that gardening can provide us with space to hold and process, I do believe that it is a site in which we could practice a liberation ontology.

If our existing ontology - or way of seeing the world - seeks to divide and separate us, could gardening help to reconnect us?

I think Robin Wall-Kimmerer at least thinks so… As she says in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass:

“People often ask me what one thing I would recommend to restore relationship between land and people. My answer is almost always, “Plant a garden.” It’s good for the health of the earth and it’s good for the health of people. A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate—once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.”

Perhaps put in more practical terms, a liberatory way would be to practice power WITH, rather than power OVER. This is what is called liberatory power. (As opposed to oppressive power.)

How do we build regenerative systems in “power with” our kin - our fellow animate beings, rather than reinforcing domination-based, destructive, extractive ones in our gardening practice and beyond?

Becoming kin

I believe that gardening - consciously, intentionally - can help us to see differently. When we see kin, we see, think, feel, behave differently. But this doesn’t just happen. It isn’t a passive thing. It requires practice, which has to be continuous. It requires a consciousness. Kin, or to make it a verb - kinning, requires doing. Because becoming kin is relational.

How do I choose to see, and be in relation with, the plants and wildlife around me in my garden?

And how might we go about kinning when we don’t have a culture that recognises kinship with plants but instead sees them as passive and insentient?

I recall hearing the poet and author, David Whyte, say how he realised his identity did not depend on his inherited beliefs. It depended on how much attention he paid on things other than himself. How it is an illusion that if you learn the Latin names of plants and animals that you would know the thing you could name, when it has little to do with the essence of the plant or animal you are naming. And I think this is particularly so when we take into account the fact that often, even though useful, Latin plant names can speak of conquest, appropriation, sometimes of erasure.

So as well as learning the names of plants, I try to pay close attention. To deeply observe and really get to know the plants in my garden. Not just the conventionally attractive, desirable ones that I might have chosen to plant and cultivate, but also the wildflowers that make a home in my garden too. How and where do they like to grow? Where are they happy and healthy? Are they edible - and to whom? I try to get to know their habit, habitat and features. The relationships they have. I begin to really see them, to know them, to appreciate them, to learn their stories.

But I’m also inclined to agree with the botanist and author, Matthew Hall, when he says that building a familiarity through deep observation might be a first step to affinity but that he wonders whether this is enough to overturn our cultural framing of plants as passive, insensitive and inferior. Is it enough when we have socially and legally constructed plants as objects - mere property for human use?

Perhaps we have to go deeper than mere observation.

A suggestion that Hall makes is to recognise the personhood of plants - that they do not exist merely for us to exploit and use.

As part of this he uses ritual to orient towards beings we share the earth with (plants, animals, rocks…) in order to re-inhabit our world on kinship terms. And the two rituals he talks about using, I happen to try to practice also. One is the asking of permission and offering of thanks when he takes something - be it leaves, fruit, stems, nuts - from plants in the garden. This act is not only humbling - opening us up to humility - but also to sympathy and gratitude.

And the second is to sit and listen to the plants - not just to audible sounds but to let the plants be centered - rather than our own human wants, desires and commentary. He sits on the edge of a vegetable bed under a ngaio tree, my preferred place to practice this is in the meadow in my garden.

One of the things I also practice is qi gong and tai chi in the garden. I’m very much still a novice. But in my movement and breathing, as part of my practice, I picture the mutuality of our being, that our very breathing is mutual and shared - the oxygen I breathe in from the plants and give back in the form of carbon dioxide. I feel and appreciate the mutuality between us.

I don’t share any of this to suggest that this is what you should also do too - this isn’t intended as a prescriptive list. It’s about finding your way to deeper and meaningful connection.

How do you want to build kinship?

Coming back to our bodies

Another way in which we suffer disconnection, or separation, is from ourselves. In particular, our mind from our bodies. We’ve been taught to elevate mind over body. To mistrust our feelings. We believe that reason and rationality are superior. From very early ages we are taught to disassociate from ourselves.

For me, tai chi has been one way of returning to the present, to the sensory, to the body. To become embodied. But I think this is something we can practice whilst gardening too.

Gardening gets us off our screens, it can help to get us out of our heads and into our bodies in the present moment. Connecting us with what is physical and real in our immediate surroundings. We become more tuned in. More sympathetic. More caring.

I love what David Abrams, a philosopher & ecologist, says:

“…those of us who work to preserve wild nature have to work as well for a return to our senses and for a renewed respect for sensorial modes of knowing. Because our senses are our most immediate access to the more than human world around us. The eyes, the ears, the nostrils catching faint whiffs of sea salt on the breeze. The fingertips grazing the smooth bark of an aspen tree. This porous skin rippling with chills at the felt presence of another animal. Our bodily senses bring us into relation with the breathing earth at every moment.

If human kind seems to have forgotten its thorough dependence on the earthly community of beings, it can only be because we’ve forgotten or dismissed as irrelevant, the sensory dimension of our lives. These senses is what is most wild in us.

[…]

Sensory experience is the way our body binds its life to the other lives that surround it. The way the earth couples itself to our thoughts and our dreams. Sensory perception is the glue that binds our separate nervous systems into the wider, encompassing, ecosystem.”

What is within reach?

So, when I garden I do so trying to nurture a connectedness and kinship to the more-than-human, to the earth I plant into, to the place I am situated in and all the beings around me. And I don’t think that this action and intention is insignificant.

As Judy Ling Wong (the environmental activist and honorary president of the Black Environment Network) says: “we love what we enjoy and we want to protect what we love”. And I believe that gardening, through this enjoyment, cultivates love. It can help us to find ways back to connection with this earth, ourselves and each other.

When you love something, you care for it - and so it is with gardening and tending the earth and habitat we share with other beings. In our garden ecosystems we can see how our flourishing is closely intertwined and connected with the rest of life.

Practicing a liberatory ontology and cultivating kinship has to necessarily encompass all our ways of thinking, being and doing. It includes how we see and treat all our fellow humans and all our more-than-human kin in the rest of the living world. It is not instant, it is not easy. It is an ongoing practice for sure.

Gavin Van Horn points out that caring for small wonders is within reach of us all and that the world needs caretakers, not saviours. He asks us: “What is within reach?” And I think gardening can help us do that - focus us on what is within reach. What can we do, how can we care, in our own backyards and green patches - and then how might this ripple out beyond?

As the biologist Merlin Sheldrake has written: “It is by imagining ourselves as separable - from one another and the ecosystems that sustain us - that we justify both the exploitation and the oppression of other humans and ecological devastation.”

When we garden we become more directly connected to the web of life, strengthening our relationship to ourselves and with all living beings, human or otherwise, around us.

I believe that gardening with intention can help us to remember our connection - or, perhaps even, to re-member ourselves as a limb of a larger body or whole. We are not separate or superior.

We are all indigenous to Earth. We belong to one another. We all belong here.

Radicle

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