Thanksgiving - Life in My Landscape and the Concept of Reciprocity

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Thanksgiving is a day for reflection. A time to pause for a moment and think clearly about the gifts we've been given - and, to a point, the gifts we pass forward. There are a great many things for me to be thankful for, but near the top is the newly created gift of my living landscape. Robin Wall Kimmerer in her amazing book, Braiding Sweetgrass, talks about the concept of reciprocity - the act of giving back to the world what we've been gifted by it. It had and still does have a profound influence on me and my approach here. We live by taking the lives of others. There is no denying it. Whether it's a plant-based life or one that consumes meat as well, we live by consuming. We consume space that was once the home of others and we take resources that could have been used to support another life. We do this daily and often without reflection. Today is a day to do that.

We take life with or without reverence. The choice is ours, consciously or not. When we cherish the sacrifice other life has given us, we plant in ways to compensate. For over 30 years now, I have striven to create and promote the concept of a living landscape. For much of that time, I hadn't nearly a clue why I did so other than it seemed to make life interesting. The concept of reciprocity has finally become more ingrained in my mind. It's not just that having life around us is interesting; it's one of the most powerful ways really to give back for my time on this earth.  When I provide a place for a bird to nest that wasn't able to before, it gives something back. The butterflies, bees, and other pollinators that now find habitat in my once barren landscape and produce new generations because of it does so also.  

We live as a species embodying a somewhat cancerous existence. Our population grows in an uncontrolled sort of way and as we spread across the earth, we take ever greater amounts of resources to fuel it - often without any consideration of how it affects all of the other life forms that once used those resources and depend on them for their future. It seems such a simple thing to put habitat back in places where we can do it most easily - in our yards and places of commerce; a simple switch from a sea of turf grass (or worse yet gravel and shell) and a foundation planting of plastic nonnative plants to one composed of species that provide an ecological function. Some of the planet seems to be waking up to this, but it is yet too few and far between. 

When I moved to this new residence, I found it in a sea of lifeless landscaping. There was no reason for anything to visit, much less take up residence with me and it took months for anything to find me here. The fact that some have is a most-rewarding experience. I have a long way to go to pay back my taking, but I know that I'm on the right path. Landscapes are not about beauty - the aesthetics of a beautiful (but plastic) plant. They are not about ease of maintenance and they are not about "fitting in."  They should be far more about ecological function and about giving something back for what we have taken away. The fact that a living landscape is also the most beautiful is secondary. To all of you that embrace this concept, I thank you and for the others, I hope that we can serve as an example of how our civilization can move forward hand in hand with the rest of the natural world. After all, we are a part of it.


Hawthorn flower and metallic bee

Comments

  1. Bruce VanderveenNovember 27, 2020 at 3:59 AM

    True. I've often wondered how much of the "greatness" of America was/is due to all its exploitable resources. It's good to give back as much as possible.

    ReplyDelete
  2. randyortonApril 5, 2021 at 2:42 AM

    Best Landscape Company Thanks for a very interesting blog. What else may I get that kind of info written in such a perfect approach? I’ve a undertaking that I am simply now operating on, and I have been at the look out for such info.

    ReplyDelete
  3. mexwellSeptember 25, 2021 at 3:33 AM

    Drainage experts Awesome article, it was exceptionally helpful! I simply began in this and I'm becoming more acquainted with it better! Cheers, keep doing awesome!

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