The Garden Awakening | Mary Reynolds | TEDxWexford

hello everyone um it's really nice to be here in my hometown um okay so the focus of this TEDx session was to look at the issues were facing in the world and to think how are we going to change things and make things better for ourselves as a society so we're facing an awful lot of issues we're facing so many issues that most of us are overwhelmed you know I try not to look at the news I try not to read papers because it's too much it's too much to take on there's so much wrong and it's very hard to figure out what to do our leaders are not leading our leaders are lining their own pockets and they're lining the pockets of multinational corporations and they're not making good decisions we have to fight to protect the vulnerable in our society we have to fight to protect our environment there's something seriously wrong with the leadership we have so what can we do well what can I do is what you have to come back to and I am what I call a reformed garden designer I don't know what else to say um about six years ago I decided to write a book about my work because many people had asked me to because what I do is quite unique and I believed I was quite unique and I believed I was fabulous until I started writing about my work and then I wrote myself out of a job because because I realized that even though even though my work was was good and all of the gardens that I designed were beautiful and they were designed in harmony with the shapes and passions of nature they were not willing to stay as I had designed them that land was being extremely bold and it was it was trying to become something else and I everything I did it tried to be something else so I kept trying to control ish and I didn't like that you know it's like get back in your box and stay as I want you to be just like anybody who works with land tends to do but it but when I wrote about this I realized you know the land has intentions of its own and I need to figure out what they are if I'm truly to work in harmony with the land I need to figure out what those intentions are and how do I actually do this how do I do something positive in the world how do I continue to earn a living while not damaging the earth so I went back I went back to work to experiences I had when I was a kid I spoke to a lot of older people who have worked with land who understand different ways of working with land I went back and researched different cultures and how we used to work with land and how can we move forward with with in harmony truly work in harmony with nature and actually do something to heal this planet so one particular experience that I had I was about 6 or 7 I grew up on a farm in County Wexford and I was the youngest of six children and there was it was a bit was a lot of freedom when we were young it was a very different world back then and the land was still truly alive it was filled with life industrial farming had not taken hold yet the Green Revolution was very young and we still had life everywhere it's different now but back then I distinctly remember walking out into this very small little field at the top of the farm near my neighbor's I was about 5 or 6 and it was a beautiful sort of day in May I remember that because the Hawthorns were blooming and the scent is something which is all always evoked this particular feeling in me so I walked into this very small of the field and I remember feeling there was something behind me and I looked behind me and the gap which was about 4 meters wide which I had just walked ruk had completely disappeared and all of the hedges and trees had moved together so that there was no way out of that field and I remember the system clean as mad as it sounds it was very real to me and it is formed it has been the most forming experience of my life since then and I was very frightened of course and I walked around the field for a long time trying to find my way Eischen there was no way out of that little safe it's just crazy but eventually eventually I got distracted by the fact that the Sun was shining and the bees and the butterflies are buzzing around and I sat in the grass and I calmed down and then I noticed something unusual that all the plants and trees were preening for my attention and they all had unique individual personalities and they were all very strong characters and I kept thinking what why why why do they want me to notice them and every time I think about that time in that field which ended pretty quickly and I the neighbors had noticed me and shouted over the fence and when I looked around the gap was back and I just wandered home and um every time I think about that experience I try and figure out what is it what happened or what was so important about that and when I started writing this book I realized that although my gardens were designed in harmony with nature and they were designed with very strong intentions they were missing a very important part of the puzzle and that puzzle was connection and what I realized is that the land that was in my family for generations was part of my family and those plants in that land they were part of my family I was part of their family and that connection was incredibly powerful and very strong and we've lost that connection with the earth and ever since we stopped growing our own food that's when we lost our connection with the earth because up until then it was extremely important that we treated the land well it was very important that the land was was was healthy because we depended on it for our survival and as soon as we stopped growing our own food the land became of no value unless it was beautiful and the earth embodies the feminine energy and our feminine our feminine energy has been used and abused to such a degree and it's reflected in the way women are treated in the world today and we have we've used and abused the land now to such a degree that we are in serious trouble then the biggest problem in my opinion that we are facing these days is industrial farming and farming has gone so far away from where it should be it needs to change the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has made a very powerful plea for people to return to regenerative farming it's farming based on a graph our story if we if we turn all of the lands that's used for industrial farming at the moment back into Agri forestry which is based on trees and plants and animals mixed together we can reverse climate change in five years that is so impressive and yet the multinational corporations that are controlling industrial farming have absolutely no interest in losing their monopoly power and they are so powerful that it's almost impossible to get through this message the most important thing that we can do is look at the alternatives what can we do as one individual how can we fight against such a massive amount of power so what we can do is we can take the little bits of ranch that we are lucky enough to be in charge of the looking up to be guardians of because that's what we've forgotten we've forgotten that we're guardians of this planet that's our role in this ecosystem we have no other role it's not important that we're here it's important that we mind this place and we've stopped minding it we have stopped minding it for a long time and it's as a result we have nearly pushed ourselves to ecosystem collapse and it's very dangerous position we are in and if anyone isn't aware of that all you have to do is look around and see it's okay here because it still looks lush but if you go be and the first world it's a very different story but anyway back to what we can do so as an individual I wrote this book to show people that if you work in the old ways that we used to work with with land and you reconnect with it as an individual unique living creature the same way that you and I feel lost in pain the same way that you and I need to be loved then we can change things so what I realize is that all land has unique individuals and characters right and if we look at those pieces of land like unique beings we can change things so if you look at a body of land like your garden as a vulnerable child because it's a cleared place a piece of land it looks to you its guardian or its parent for guidance now you could leave it go wild but that is a terrible way to raise children I mean they might survive and absolutely eventually they will find their way back they will find their way to becoming a mature independent being which is what a multi what most land wants to become unless it's a floodplain are top of a mountain or a savanna it wants to become a multi tiered woodland system and we are constantly fighting against it and punishing it when it tries to become that so if we take our land as a as a vulnerable child and we guide it towards a multi-tiered woodland system and you can do that even in the smallest of spaces and you can you can create spaces for us as Guardians within that but this this this this thing we have of controlling land and imposing our visions upon us is so wrong and as landscaping professionals and there's people who are guarding these pieces of land we cannot continue to do that and if we take back our power and step outside the system of industrial farming and decide to grow all of our own food in as much as you can and and do it in such a way that allows to learn to become what it wants to become then where we are going to do something very powerful and there's a system of growing food in a multi-tiered woodland system called forest gardening which is a permanent ecosystem based on perennial plants and it takes time to build the system up and when you do you're going to create a very very powerful sanctuary for all the creatures that live above them below the soil including ourselves and if enough of a step outside of the industrial farming system and try and create communities that are that are locally sustainably kind of independent if we can grow enough food in all these places like every County Council has vast quantities of land that's just there but they have to maintain keep cutting grass on so if you don't if you're not lucky enough to have your own garden you can at least go to your council and ask for those spaces to be turned into community gardens and we can we can create very important changes in our system if enough of us create these spaces what can happen is we create a web of interconnected very very strong ecosystems and we can take the power away from the multinationals save no interest in this working all they're interested in is us depending on food which is grown using poisons and those self same poisons are poisoning the earth and in a similar reflection you're poisoning us because we're eating the food that is grown with poison how anybody thinks that we can stay well when we're poisoning the land and poisoning ourselves with these I cannot understand why people don't see what is wrong but organic farming even though it's better it's still not great it's still based on tilling the land we've lost 70% of our topsoil in 100 years it took thousands and thousands of years to build up a few inches of topsoil and in in hundred years we've washed 70% of it into the sea so the reason for this is that you should never have bare soil and most industrial farming is based on bare soil so when rainwater hits the earth the temperature of the rainwater has to be higher than the temperature of the water but of the soil before it can be absorbed into the earth if it hits the soil and the soil is bared the soil is warmer than the water so what happens is the water hits the earth and runs across the top of it and washes that soil into the nearest stream the stream is built up with silt and then they cause flooding and everyone's wondering why our land is becoming a serious floodplain obviously we're building on floodplains as well but industrial farming is what's causing it it's undi forestation seventy percent of water that hits a tree doesn't hit the ground you know with two percent of tree cover left in Ireland two percent that's disgraceful there's an extra three percent left in the hedgerows and those hedgerows are being refurbished constantly so we the average in Europe is 36 percent tree coverage we have two percent native tree coverage left in Ireland this is not a green around anymore and we need to move back towards that it's a disgrace that we haven't and I don't understand why people are ignoring the fact it is not the land of green happy gentle folk anymore but that's because the wrong people are leading us and we have to take back our own power and do what we can in our own spaces and ignore them because the best thing you can do if you want to get rid of something is to ignore it and it dies so basically to end my rant I would like to say that um our mother is this earth everything we are everything we survive on and depend on comes from the earth and we're going to go back into it when we die we need our mother to survive but she is worn ash she is really tired she cannot give us anything else so we have to step up we have to grow up and we have to start taking care of her we have to become guardians of this planet again not gardeners okay thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 74,164

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Ireland, Global Issues, Activism, Agriculture, Benefit, Biodiversity, Biosphere, Cause, Community, Creativity, Culture, Design, Disaster relief, Environment, Gardening, Global issues

Id: VZcFYf01ns8

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 21 2016