'Waste not, want not.'

In some gardening traditions, homo sapiens attempts to take control of nature, trying to tame it to a recently evolved plan (first human farmers 12-7000 years ago). Elsewhere we find people cooperating with nature and trying to find a balance with it reflecting the hunter-gatherer, where nature's abundance is recognised, and the aim is to cultivate nature's work rather than cultivate crops through our own work.

Productivity is more than ever today key for our survival, for our ability to feed ourselves across the globe. Sir David Attenborough told the BBC's Today programme:

"Since I first started making programmes 60 years ago, the human population has tripled."

So the demands on the harvest must have tripled too. Maybe even more, as modern methods make provision for so much waste both in transportation, and in the demands for particular sizes and colours of products either by the consumer or by the packer and seller. Homogeneity is unnatural, and limits us. Variety, or difference, and a wider gene pool, which enriches us, is increasingly neglected.

What works to maximum effect with minimum effort? Surely working with the enormous forces of nature is going to help?

And yes, minimum effort. Nature does the growing. We should just be enabling. Eating to live, not living to eat. In a healthy agricultural environment, there should be a great deal of living.

When I first went to look around my allotment, I found every style and every approach among my neighbours in a varied patchwork of personal spaces that we together have made. Collectively we have room for a little bit of everything. Regimented rows of planting, clean and tidy so all the energy goes to the plants. Stone and gravel paths for walking and sitting without getting muddy. Lawns, greenhouses, summerhouses, where children play and seedlings are raised away from hungry mice and birds . (I have a mouse in my green house who has nibbled my hard green tomatoes all away, but they wouldn't ripen so I am grateful). Elsewhere, a mixture of trees and shrubs , composting, carefully planned wood rotting and fungus growing, together with companion planting, encouraging the creatures and chemicals that nature provides to enrich everything. All blessed with the presence of bees in the bee skeps hidden in the middle, whose 'owner' I have yet to see.

Bee keeping at its best is a beautiful thing. You can nurture the bees so it's worth their while to live alongside you, to pollinate your fruit and veg for you while going about their own business, and share a bit of honey, not too much.

This bee with a little hornet in a nasturtium is on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. I love it because of the way the flower leans down to make a roof so it can sneakily cover the insects and send its pollen further, and I love the sweet way the hornet waits in line.

There is plenty for everybody. I can gather nasturtium leaves for a peppery tasting salad and even sprinkle one or two flowers on top and eat these too. (Check the varieties before you do this.) Picking flowers appropriately can make more flowers grow, so my participation can be positive for the plant and for the bee. We do not have to ravage nature. We are nature after all.

Understanding how the earth works lets you be part of the process of feeding the earth while fulfilling your own food needs. Nothing is a waste of time or effort. What you do has a place in a much bigger, older and wider picture. It can be part of a positive cycle. It is natural to know where our food comes from, and natural to enjoy it.

https://youtu.be/KfVLy0FxnPQ

Through the active not esoteric spirituality of the garden, you can:

'Fulfil parts of yourself you could never imagine. Live the dream here, now.' Tamara Rufolo

'Not a destination, but a way to be.' Pandora Thomas

I am not unaware of the current issues of climate change and desertification. It is complex and it is important. It is also political. We are for sure losing huge amounts of land year on year as sea levels rise, and yet some of what is happening can be mitigated by a cooperative approach to the world's functioning and fertility. This is not gong to be done through rose coloured glasses, but through practical approaches that integrate our humanity with our home planet.

You have to carry a lot of buckets of water to the garden in the beginning. It is a lot of hard work. But in time, God will send the rain, and flood it with rich silts and nourishment. Your desert will flower. (paraphrasing Teresa of Avila)

If you do not know how to pray, just carry the buckets. Faith and grace will do all that must be done.

https://youtu.be/rRZ-IxZ46ng

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1 - http://www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/history.htm

2 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24303537

3 - Isaiah 35:1 It will blossom profusely And rejoice with rejoicing and shout of joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, The majesty of Carmel and Sharon.