For The Love Of Plants
by Lorna Howarth, from Resurgance Magazine

We received an email in the Resurgence office from a London Underground train driver. Ken is a thirty-eight year old with a wife and family, living in the city and working long shifts on the tube. He is an avid Resurgence reader, having subscribed for a number of years, and told us he always found articles of interest in the magazine. But, he asked, "How can an urban-dweller like me change my lifestyle to lessen my ecological footprint?" It was a question that set me thinking. I think one answer is to love plants.

HRH Prince Charles was roundly castigated for saying that he talked to his plants, but many gardeners do—they make more sense than most humans, and our breath feeds and nourishes them. It's a mutual thing. Always associated with mystery and magic, I've experienced how plants seemingly respond to our needs. Whilst walking through our meadow with my mother, we both wished wholeheartedly that we had some ragged robin, that denizen of early summer—the very next day a perfect specimen was in bloom where we had stood. Perhaps it was always there and in our dreaming we missed it—but it did seem as if the plant had responded to us.

Our farm was hit by the foot and mouth crisis and we lost our last two cows and our sheep. It was a terrible experience to see their bloated bodies awaiting the young lads from the army to come and dispense with them. We were traumatised and saddened by the smoking pyres and wasted lives. But in a few short months without being grazed, our fields blossomed with native wild flowers that were previously relegated to the hedgerows, and our spirits were lifted by their beauty and tenacity. On Dartmoor, where footpaths had been closed and sheep culled, whole swathes of hillside were covered in bluebells and their soft lilac hue could be seen from miles away. The plants taught us that given half a chance, they will flourish. Laurence Hills many years ago published a book called Fighting Like the Flowers—I now know what he means.

We should always make room for plants in our lives as they offer us so much. They teach us patience whilst we wait for them to grow, they teach us awareness of the seasons and of real time, and they are brave and courageous, growing in the most desolate of places we leave for them. Learning how to consciously love plants, noticing them and appreciating their finer points, is a big step towards living more lightly upon the earth.

So, perhaps the most radical, truly revolutionary thing we can do is love plants, grow them, use them, let them enrich the soil of our being. Plants bring so much positive energy into the world: most plants are healers in one way or another; aspirin comes from the willow, and vitamin C finds a wonderful source in the abundant wild spinach often called Good King Henry. So plants bring healing, and they bring joy because don't we just love to eat them? Their biodiversity could feed the world if only monocrops weren't all-hallowed. Plants could provide biodiesel for us and help combat global warming, their wood could shelter and warm us in perpetuity if we cared for trees more thoughtfully, and their incredible beauty brings us a spiritual awareness. Plants have an inherent right to share our planet, and their nature is that of provider, teacher, sage. But on a personal level, how does one begin to love plants?

Of course, it helps by having access to land, no matter the size: even in a small garden or yard, a start can be made. A few home-grown carrots from a pot on the patio, a handful of parsley, a couple of window-sill ripened tomatoes— add these to any meal and one is immediately aware of the delicious, fresh, 'aliveness' of their taste. Even if one's total harvest is a sprig of thyme, nothing bought in a shop ever tasted so good. Growing food, nurturing the seedlings as they emerge towards the sunlight until the time comes when the valiant little plant bears its fruit, is a fascinating, meditative process, encouraging thoughts on death, life, and all the stages in between. Gardening is incredibly Zen. Who needs a motorbike?

Having access to a little more land is totally microcosmic: seeing the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower is a powerful illuminator—so get an allotment, quick! Or do as Bill Mollison the co-founder of Permaculture did, and push apple pips into any small area of ground. Sprinkle coriander seeds into a pot on your fire escape, stick a dogwood cutting into that whole in the brickwork by the canal (the variety cornus alba will even bear delicious little custard-tasting fruits). Bill Mollison stuck any number of edible seedlings into any available space—until the city bloomed and the Permaculture idea blossomed in countries all over the world.

Of course, its easier to grow lemons in Australian cities than it is in the UK, but it's really surprising what native plants can't actually be eaten. The urban-dweller could avail themselves of what's growing on the street—dandelion leaves are delicious in a salad together with a few fresh beech leaves and some chickweed, all of which are regulars of verges and parking lots. Puffball mushrooms balloon under hedgerows in parks. Nasturtiums in their profusion will grow and self-seed anywhere, and every part of the plant is edible. Wild garlic wafts its pungent aroma from the canalside and is the most delicious vegetable ever to grace our plates. Unfortunately, pollution levels in some areas may preclude such wild eating.

Our love of plants should never be simply because they provide for us. We must learn to love plants for themselves—they are intrinsic partners in a healthy ecosystem and we have co-evolved with them in a mutually beneficial symbiosis for millennia. We disregard them at our peril. But as Robert Hart, the pioneer of agroforestry pointed out, if every city-dweller with a garden loved plants enough to grow a fruit tree, we'd have new forests of millions of trees all over the planet—and think of the tons of carbon that could be 'sunk' from the atmosphere and the abundance of fruit that wouldn't need to be flown in from foreign climes.

Imagine if all the plant-lovers and all the anti-globalisation protesters throughout the world were wandering the cities and towns planting the gift of seed in the bare earth—there could be a cornucopia of delights to eat and to look at and love. So, perhaps the most radical, truly revolutionary thing we can do is to love plants. This may not be the definitive answer to Ken's question, but it is a real ray of hope.

Lorna Howarth is co-editor of Resurgence magazine and runs Wildwood Nursery, specialising in rare, edible and useful plants.Photo caption: Wild garlic at Lorna Howarth's nursery.

Resurgence is a journal of ecology, spirituality and the arts. Published for over thirty years, Resurgence is always at the cutting edge of current thinking, with contributors such as Wendell Berry, Fritjof Capra, Hazel Henderson, Thomas Berry, Matthew Fox, Suzi Gablik and many others. Visit www.resurgence.org for more details, or email ed@resurge.demon.co.uk for a free sample copy.