Garden-Time
“In the garden, hope emerges, not as a feeling or wishful thinking, but as a practice for imagining the future by enacting this ethic of care, as captured so evocatively by a gardener in Warrnambool who writes that ‘every seed I plant is a wish for tomorrow.’ In the same vein, another gardener from Hobart said ‘There is a future when you garden’. The practice of hope, and the politics of radical transformation, are now a matter of survival.”
Nick Rose, PhD and CEO of Sustain, offers a glimpse of a possible future based on gardeners’ stories and testimonies found in The Pandemic Garden Survey (Sustain). What does time spent in gardens mean? How does this time shape our feelings and intelect?
By Dr Nick Rose, CEO, with Dr Kelly Donati, chair, Sustain: The Australian Food Network
Photo: Christina Deravedisian/Unsplash
“The hell of the living is not something that will be. If there is one, it is what is already here, the hell we live in every day, that we make by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the hell, and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of hell, are not hell, then make them endure, give them space."
Italo Calvino, The Invisible Cities
“The cause of food system crises is to be found in the core logic of capital accumulation, the profit imperative, and the relentless and expanding processes of commodification and financialization. The key metric of ‘economic growth’ is problematised and discussed. An embryonic ‘social immune response’ is now observable, in the diverse practices of decommodification, proposals for de-growth and commoning that together constitute an emerging ‘food as a commons’ movement.”
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains”.
Rosa Luxemburg
“The old is dying, and the new cannot yet be born. In this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
Antonio Gramsci
“Breathing in, there is only the present moment. Breathing out, it is a wonderful moment.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
My son turned 20 this year. He’s completing the 2nd year of a Bachelor of Commerce at Melbourne University. I’ve been distressed to learn that the curriculum appears to be pure neoclassical doctrine. He’s been reading Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises, and tells me in impassioned tones that the ‘free market’ is the best guarantor of human freedom, and that ‘government interference’ is the problem. We have heated, yet friendly, discussions and disagreements. My heart aches when he says he feels that there’s never been a better time to be alive - with gladness, because I know that so many of his generation feel an overwhelming sense of existential dread and hopelessness about much that characterizes our era. My son shares his daily routine with me - rising at 4.30 a.m., reading the news (from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times) for two hours, then gym, then tennis, then more reading (of biographies of US presidents from the 19th century) - and says that he’s never been happier. Tears well in my eyes to know that he’s happy - even as those same tears are flowing because I know that everywhere there is loss and suffering in the human and non-human realms at levels that are barely comprehensible.
Can it be said, to paraphrase Charles Dickens, that we live in the best of times and the worst of times? That we face crises that are indeed existential in nature, that we have propelled many species, and maybe even ourselves, towards an extinction event? That we have indeed reached, as I argued recently, drawing on the analysis of John McMurtry, the cancer stage of capitalism? That the colonial and imperial mindset, buttressed by the Genesis-derived theory of dominion and the relentless expansionary imperative of capital accumulation, has now reached its apotheosis, with every corner of the planet colonised and subdued, and the human body, mind and soul the ultimate frontier for profit-making and commodification? Think ‘big data’; and reflect on the fact that, whatever view one takes on the COVID-19 pandemic and the appropriate public health response to it, that universal and perpetual mass vaccination is a guaranteed and endless pipeline of constant profits for Big Pharma. Reflect on the trends and the policy responses, and ask yourself whether we stand at the threshold of the biosecurity state which, combined with a highly virulent form of surveillance capitalism, is pushing us rapidly towards a 21st century version of totalitarianism, as Christian von Guesau argued recently, drawing on the seminal analysis of Hannah Arendt.
If there is a human version of living hell, it is surely totalitarianism, whatever form it may take. Total control of the masses by an elite, over body, mind and movement. It’s a bleak prospect indeed.
Yet the project of totalitarianism is never complete, and it’s never permanent. There will always be those who resist the process of mass formation that is an essential precondition for a totalitarian society. In the words of Italo Calvino, “seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of hell, are not hell, then make them endure, give them space.” Space to breathe. Space to think beyond orthodoxy. Space to ask questions. Space to gather. Space to debate, and formulate new proposals to deal with the challenges we face.
For me, an essential part of that space is physical, in the garden, growing and sharing food, and rediscovering the social bonds and simple, yet profound pleasures, that flow from it. In the garden, there is the space to slow down, and appreciate the bonds of life we all share. Here, the voices and perspectives of respondents to Sustain’s 2020 Pandemic Gardening survey offer profound and hopeful insights- a window into that which is not hell. Temporarily freed from the rush of commuting and office work, many described an expanded sense of time, which allowed them to reflect on ‘what really matters’ in life, as many gardeners described. In becoming lost in the rhythms of the garden, a different temporality surfaces–garden time–in which life unfolds according to a different logic and where productivity takes on a less instrumentalized meaning.
So unrelenting is the clock-time of capitalism that even in the face of serious illness, it is hard to make time to recover. As one gardener recovering from cancer treatment explains, had it not been for lockdown, ‘I would have pushed myself to return to work when my immune system was still compromised.’ Another gardener similarly in recovery says: ‘This shutdown has made me do the right thing and rest. Without the shutdown, I feel I would have tried to carry on as usual.’ Indeed many others suffering or recovering from cancer wrote about the healing potential of the garden. Under the capitalist structure of wage-labour, there is a great imbalance between the pressures of time dedicated to our working lives compared to the time that is needed to maintain one’s health, one’s relationships, or even to recover from a life-threatening illness.
Garden time was healing in many other ways. As one gardener writes, ‘I lost my husband last year and within the month, my father also passed away. My garden saved me from “drowning” in grief. […] The month of 'lockdown' was the most peaceful and healing time. I played in my garden from early morning till twilight; the soil was still warm, the sun shone and the birds played around me.’ Others suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder reflected on their garden as ‘lifesaving’. A man struggling with the effects of PTSD after years of firefighting notes that his garden was a ‘balm for his soul,’ as it was similarly described by many others. The multiplicity of stories people shared with us were a testament to the healing power of the garden.
Gardeners’ stories spoke to how growing their own food engaged the totality of their humanity: what they eat, how they respond to and feel about the world around them, whom they interact with and how they experience these interactions—in some cases, their very sense of self. One gardener describes the great anxiety she suffered after her husband had a severe heart attack. Co-existence with other creatures brought a sense of calm: ‘I was unable to sleep and constantly worried. After a day of work in the garden, all I feel is peace, being with the birds, lizards, my native bees and all the other small creatures is such a gift.’
In the space of the garden, gardeners felt safe, nurtured and literally nourished—a place to isolate but also to connect. It was not the virus they feared, but what was to come. It was the future itself that scared them. As a Brisbane gardener writes, ‘From public health, political and systemic failures to the environment and the state of our soil, the future scares me.’ This palpable anxiety about the future was expressed by many, particularly in light of what many describe as a lack of political leadership and meaningful action at multiple levels of government. While some felt the pandemic presents a once-in-a-century opportunity for transformative change, this Melbourne gardener articulates a concern shared by many other respondents: ‘the inequitable systems we have developed and organised ourselves into will persist. That’s more frightening to me than the virus.’
Photo: Christina Deravedisian/Unsplash
We cannot afford to ignore these affective dimensions of climate change, species extinction and the multiple other crises of the present era. One gardener framed the crisis, particularly as it relates to the food system, like so:
Huge, impersonal and automated farms deny the rights and wellbeing of every living creature. From the earth itself to the seeds that are doctored, the weeds that are poisoned, the apples that are picked before their time, stored until they are mummified and then coated with wax to make them shine, all the way to the fuels wasted by trucks, the plastic that proliferates, the children who don't know what it is to see a growing apple or taste a natural crunch, to the waterways that are polluted by [chemicals], to the farmers who can’t live where their grandparents did, to the insects, bees, birds, small scampering creatures who can’t survive in this hostile environment, to the very air we breathe... We have got this gift of eating so very wrong. This is no longer food, but a slow form of suicide.
Regardless of what direction this pandemic—or future pandemics—takes, the destructive forces of non-linear climate change are now all too clear. The fear, anxieties and grief that so many gardeners articulate are, observes geographer Lesley Head, ‘our companions on this journey’ through the Anthropocene--or the Capitalocene, as others describe it. Edible gardening reveals itself as not only a means for understanding interbeing with the more-than-human world but also generative of more generous ways of being in the world with many gardeners seeking to expand their gardens not for themselves, but so they might share its bounty with others. Thousands of gardeners in the survey expressed a yearning for a kinder, gentler and slower way of life that they felt was essential to meet the converging crises of the twenty-first century in a post-COVID era. This resonates strongly with the advocacy of de-growth advanced by many. It speaks powerfully of an ethic of care and solidarity that is now emerging through the arid and cold sterility of capitalist competition and individualism.
In the garden, hope emerges, not as a feeling or wishful thinking, but as a practice for imagining the future by enacting this ethic of care, as captured so evocatively by a gardener in Warrnambool who writes that ‘every seed I plant is a wish for tomorrow.’ In the same vein, another gardener from Hobart said ‘There is a future when you garden’.
The practice of hope, and the politics of radical transformation, are now a matter of survival.
There was a strong sentiment of scepticism and cynicism that Australian governments would embrace the opportunity that the pandemic had created for truly transformational and positive change in the direction of fairness and sustainability. Yet at least one gardener saw the possibility of a local and global groundswell that would render the matter of government and corporate action moot: ‘If we can come together as local and global communities we can achieve this. Whether the government or corporations help may be irrelevant. Hopefully consumer culture dies along with late stage capitalism.’
The demise of capitalism necessitates a cultural, emotional and affective shift: the embrace, not only of a new paradigm, but of a fundamentally transformed way of being and living that ripples across and through and within our societies, institutions and collective souls.
A shift to embrace this interbeing would be transformational because it would require the radical restructuring of the systems that we take for granted, certainly in the most industrialised and privileged countries in the global North, including Australia. It would require that we subject all our institutions and structures to two simple yet profound questions: do they enhance life, human and non-human? Or do they degrade, harm and destroy it? From asking these questions, and applying the corresponding assessment, a series of radical changes would flow.
The pandemic was powerful because there was a necessarily, albeit brief, disruption in capitalist clock-time. In the slowing of productivity and consumption, the ever-spinning cogs of its machinery slowed momentarily by government mandate as the behest of public health experts. Our survey was an opportunity for people to express themselves in this period of interruption. Their reflections, a handful of which we have captured in this essay, express a profound dissatisfaction with the status quo. They speak to a clear understanding of the grotesque unfairness of “business as usual” and the urgent need for radical transformation. Garden-time, and all the diverse affective experiences shared by so many thousands of Australians in our survey, enabled a mass critique of the clock-time of capitalism. The interbeing of the garden called forth worlds of potentiality far beyond the stunted limitations of capitalist conformity, productivity, competition, profit and accumulation.
As we track deeper into the ravages of the climate emergency and mass extinction - including, possibly, our own - now is not the time for timid tinker-around-the edges reformism. We need a cultural shift and a politics that supports an anti-capitalist and post-capitalist consciousness to emerge, to be nurtured and to flourish. If we want a truly sustainable future - one in which we satisfy our needs within the means of the planet - then we must abandon GDP growth. We must move, as quickly as possible, to a post-capitalist culture and economy. We must find those who share this sense of urgency, and create space together.
We can have an Australia in which our towns and cities are brimming and bursting with gardens and verges and parks and orchards full of delicious and fresh produce. An Australia in which no-one is hungry, in which Indigenous sovereignty is acknowledged and shapes our political culture, and in which an ethic of care for all - human and non-human - is the cultural norm.
We can have an Australia, and a world, that is not hell.
It’s as simple - and as difficult - as that.
Photo: Christina Deravedisian/Unsplash