Back in July I was invited by Pesticide Action Network to take part in their ‘Reassembling our Cities’ series of talks. I introduced the talk on ‘Connecting Communities: Bringing people together through gardening’, which also featured Sara Venn, Ashley Edwards and Poppy Okotcha. Been meaning to share the (edited) transcript of my section of the talk and just haven’t got round to it until now for one reason or another. Apologies for the delay, but here it is:
(Edited) Transcript of talk for Pesticide Action Network from 14th July 2021:
I was asked by Sam and Emma to provide an introduction and set the scene and line up the issues for the talk this evening. And I suppose one of the things people might ask or wonder is: why is there a need to think or talk about inclusivity or rather *exclusivity* in gardening? Surely anyone can garden if they wanted to or were interested in it, right? Well, yes, I believe anyone has the innate ability to be a gardener or learn the skills to garden if they wanted to… BUT does everyone have equal access to land and other resources and opportunities in order to garden? Does everyone feel equally welcome in outside spaces or out in the landscape? No, I don’t believe so. Are there barriers that prevent people from being able to access land and green spaces and to be able to garden? Barriers that may not be immediately obvious to those with the privilege to garden? Yes, I believe there are.
Of course, everyone should have a right to garden and ought to be able to garden. I think a connection to the earth and the land, or rather A NEED to connect to the earth and the land, is deeply embedded within each of us. Even though that link has often been disrupted or severed and people have been systematically disassociated and disconnected from the land, it’s as primal, visceral and basic as our need and connection to food or air or music or art.
But to think that everyone has equal opportunity or access to gardening is to ignore the structural and systemic issues that means this simply is NOT the case. Structural and systemic inequalities that sees hugely unequal land ownership in this country, which is heavily concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite.
You’ve probably heard by now the statistic that less than 1% of the population owns HALF of England!
So, while most people now own a home, homeowners’ share of England only amounts to about 5 per cent of the land.
And the structural and systemic inequalities we face disproportionately affect people of colour.
Black people have among the lowest levels of home ownership in the UK. In every socio-economic group and age group, White British households are more likely to own their own homes than all ethnic minority households combined.
According to Natural England: In the UK, ‘BAME’ communities are 60% less likely to be able to access green space and natural environments than their white counterparts. A high proportion of Black people in the UK (98%) live in urban locations.
Last September, Friends of the Earth published a report on “England’s Green Space Gap” - an England-wide analysis on the correlation between green space deprivation, income and race. It brought together data on public green space, garden space, and open access land such as mountain, moor, heath, down or common land.
It exposed how widespread green space deprivation is and how it’s an issue of racial injustice as well as a concern from a public health perspective. It found that if you are of “BAME” origin you are more than twice as likely as a white person to live in areas in England that are most deprived of green space. Almost 40% of people of BAME backgrounds live in England’s most green space-deprived neighbourhoods, compared to 14% of white people.
When it comes to professions: Farming, the Environment and Gardening sectors are among the top five LEAST DIVERSE in the UK!
These barriers to the land also means that a tiny fraction of the population decides how to use a common resource that we all depend on.
And this, along with power structures everywhere else including in the media and publishing and academia, also means that a tiny fraction of the population decides what gardening looks like or should look like. In this country that is overwhelming white and middle to upper middle class.
All this before we even mention that, for BIPOC communities, a disconnection from the land can often be traced to colonial exploitation and imperial violence (and all the legacy, baggage and fallout this carries).
So does everyone have equal access and opportunity to garden and connect to the land? No. They do not.
To believe we do would be to ignore the structural and systemic inequities that create barriers that keep people from the land.
When it comes to representation (or lack of) in gardening, some people hold the (frankly racist) belief that perhaps people of colour just don’t like to garden.
You cannot view the supposed lack of people of colour in gardening without understanding colonial history, racism and the very present and real inequity when it comes to land ownership, access to green spaces and access to opportunities.
The reality is that if you are a person of colour, or are involved in community gardening, or have an allotment, - as all of us speakers here this evening are or do - you’ll know that minoritised communities, including people of colour, are as interested in and as keen on gardening as anyone. It’s just that we have, historically, rarely been represented or acknowledged in mainstream gardening media and knowledge systems.
We have to ask: Who are the gatekeepers? Who are the tastemakers? Who do we see as knowledgeable gardeners? Who do we elevate and look to, to allow to make these decisions for us? Who decides how gardens should look, what garden features are socially acceptable or tasteful and what practices are “good” gardening practices?
And where have these standards and practices got us? When we think of how we pamper neatly mown lawns: that uses fossil fuels and in some cases, toxic chemicals and clean drinking water, just to maintain a green monoculture devoid of life.
When we look up wildflowers online and inevitably come across pages telling us they’re *weeds* and instructing us on how to use which chemicals to kill them or *control* them. When we destroy precious peat habitats for compost to grow pretty ornamentals to adorn our perfectly kept gardens.
Issues such as these are fundamental to control and exclusion, colonialism and capitalism.
The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in Europe. Our wildlife is crashing around us and continuing to decline at a deeply concerning rate. Since the 1970s, 41% of all UK species studied have declined. 26% of the UK's mammals are at risk of becoming extinct.
We are seeing the results of centuries of pollution, habitat destruction and degradation. We need to reevaluate much of how we think about things and how we do things and that is no different when it comes to how we garden and who we listen to and include in the picture.
Including a diverse range of people, knowledge and voices is a step towards healing and repair. We need to garden with and for the whole community. Gardening for the well-being of people and planet has to be a priority.
We need to understand and recognise how all these issues: land justice, the climate and biodiversity crisis and racism are interconnected: all built on and the result of exploitative, destructive, oppressive systems. You cannot fix one without addressing them all - otherwise we’re only ever working on a sticking plaster to create a “better world” and to protect privilege for a few.
So yes, bringing people together through gardening… it’s such a powerful way to connect and heal and I’m so looking forward to Sara, Ashley and Poppy talking about the ways in which this can be done.
But let’s not forget that we cannot truly do this fully without breaking down the oppressive systems that keep us divided and that involves internal self-reflection & interrogation, mindset change, individual behaviour change and a demand for system change too.
I thought I’d finish with a quote from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, which, if you haven’t already read, I would highly recommend because it’s just brilliant and so thought-provoking:
“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.”
(The series of Zoom talks were also recorded. If you’d like to watch them you can find links to them on the Pesticide Action Network website here: Pesticide Action Network: Reassembling our Cities)