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“Hiding Behind the Hedges. In Los Angeles, the wealthy will pay a fortune to protect their private lives from prying eyes. At least leafy green walls are good for the environment.”

Cool article in the New York Times; with beautiful photos. (And although this article focuses on wealthy clients, lush landscaping — offering many many benefits in addition to privacy — does not necessarily have to be expensive if we really work with nature.)

Of course this general concept can be adapted for any climate and any sized yard. Where I live, in Daytona Beach a few blocks from the ocean, I use a mix of beachy, drought-tolerant, native-species-supporting vegetation. And some food and medicine for humans too! Also, the hedges do not have to be super tidy-manicured or monoculture. They can be more soft, shaggy, polyculture.

This jewelbox effect they describe in the article is what I have aimed to create at my place. There’s a feel of outdoor rooms with a green perimeter. My intent with my yard is twofold: To provide a cozy retreat for my housemates and myself, while also providing beauty and shade, inspiration and education to neighbors and passersby.

We value our privacy (and I like to screen out the street-lights, which are super-bright to the point of disrupting sleep), but also I do love my “porous property” bench corner where anyone is invited to sit and rest! And the metal flower sculptures, animal figurines, and other art I have mounted on the fence facing the sidewalk for all to enjoy.

I would love to know what other people have done to create a lush green aesthetic in their outdoor spaces, or even indoor or semi-indoor spaces!

I love articles like this because they emphasize that people can earn a livelihood from doing landscaping that involves some thing more than just flat, buzzcut turfgrass. Moving the needle on aesthetics is important. This is a high leverage point for making change in systems, to use the terminology from Donella Meadows / Thinking in Systems that Mike Hoag has often shared in the Transformative Adventures group.

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“In a city where the bedrooms and bathrooms of one house are often within sight of the house next door, a high hedge wall — which increases privacy while reducing both noise and air pollution — has become the ultimate status symbol.”

As many people have pointed out, The recent fires in Canada; smoke in the Northeast US and Canada — as well as floods and droughts here there and everywhere — are a wakeup call. Moving north, or inland, isn’t necessarily an escape from climate effects.

And of course this whole privileged “elsewhere” mentality is a big part of what got us in trouble in the first place. It’s that whole “get ahead of the curve, race to the bottom; move to a place that is already someone else’s home” -think. Ick.

My take: The more we can adapt in place, the better off we will be, not only for ourselves but for the communities we live in. Also, my thinking tends to be how can I make my home and community better adapted, more able to welcome people who are FORCED to be climate refugees — as opposed to myself choosing to abandon my place and community even though there is no emergency.

At some point over the past couple of years, I really started to notice that if I only asked what I needed to do for my own safety, it never helped to ease my fear. No amount of planning, no amount of having, was ever enough.

But whenever I turn the question around, to how can I help and support other people; how can I help provide safety, food resilience, stable housing, clean water etc. for my community as a whole — it ends up making me feel super expansive, creative, and excited.

Of course like everyone else here, I mourn the destruction we Western industrial humans have wrought. But it just makes me want to stack and pack more beneficial relationships; get more creative with the permaculture design principles.

My favorite part of permaculture design class was always where we heard about some group of people, usually economically and socially disadvantaged, who had literally the worst piece of land ever, often really tiny and filled with trash or pollutants, and they made it into paradise. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning. I want to empower everyone everywhere to do this, so we stop trashing ecosystems, gentrifying other people’s places, etc. And it starts with what I do in my own home and city.

My first permaculture teachers, Scott Pittman and Larry Santoyo, really inspired us greatly with the stories they told.

This idea in various versions will just not die. And I don’t necessarily recommend engaging in arguments, because this particular one is an endless rabbit-hole, I have found.

That said, here are some responses I made recently that might help if you choose to try to engage the rural zealots.

“Cities will run out of water in two days if the grid goes down.”

No, not necessarily. I collect enough water off my tiny urban roof to keep my household supplied exclusively with rainwater if we need to, and I can quickly teach any neighbors how to do the same when they want to. (On that note, I am actively setting about educating my community and city about rainwater collection.)

Also: All of us expanding out into the country is really not an option. Since you are a person who seems to adamantly prefer living in the country, you’d best not wish that on yourself: all of us city-dwellers spreading out and wrecking your rural utopia. (Not to mention destroying whatever last chance the wildlife and forests might have on this planet.)

As has been the case throughout history, it will continue to be the case that some people will live in the country and others will live in the city (or town, village). And that there will continue to be social and economic interchange between the townies and the country-dwellers.

The Nature of Cities is a worldwide organization and movement that is actively working on “retrofitting” wild nature back into towns and cities. And restoring the food-growing capacity of the urban setting, and localizing transportation, and so on.

I do expect that megacities will shrink, and resume their former form of being a collection of towns and villages.

Added later:

Well then you’d better hope that a bunch of us city-dwellers commit suicide, or die of thirst or whatever, so we won’t wreck your rural idyll.

I cannot imagine what argument you are trying to win here. All of us spreading out into the country would be an absolute disaster, ecologically and socially.

Cities are not a “recent invention.” Neither are towns and villages.

And added:

And yes we absolutely need to retrofit all cities with garden allotments. Including rooftop gardens where people live underneath.

Of course canals won’t work without water. That’s what a canal is.

By the way, in our area, we get so much rain that if we were collecting and using it wisely we would stop being plagued by flooding. AND we would have enough water to share with other places. One of my fronts of effort right now is to get local and regional governments to stop the wasteful, destructive development and landscaping practices that are wrecking the water cycle and preventing healthy recharge of groundwater.

Each area — town, city, or village — needs to have relationships with local farmers. Mutually beneficial relationships. In my region we are actively cultivating economic ties with our local farmers and ranchers. We are also big on mutual aid of all kinds. We share tools and resources. etc etc etc

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I never really know what the motive of these “back to the land” zealots is. Why can’t they just be happy with their excess acreage “Green Acres” trip and leave the rest of us alone?

Maybe some of them actually don’t really like living out in the country, but they thought they had to move out there to be “sustainable”. And because misery loves company, they want to lure a bunch of us out there so we’ll be stuck hoeing potatoes with them like some post-apocalypse version of American Gothic.

(Or, maybe they’re simply realizing that they can’t run their neo-plantations without serfs. And permaculture-minded city-dwellers who are struggling with housing security and such will make easy targets. Yikes, now there’s a doomy thought. To put a more positive spin on it, some city-dwellers might be looking for exactly such a bucolic live-together situation. My thought remains, though, that this pattern of purchasing big acreage that only one or two or a few people live on is basically re-creating plantations and colonization. We still need to atone for what we did the first time around, not do it again!)

Bad idea, by the way: Squandering all our physical and mental energy toiling in isolation, reinventing wheels that other isolated people toiling on other excess acreage are simultaneously reinventing.

(On this note, I often hear versions of the following from people who have moved out to the country, especially if it’s some very different bioregion from where they’ve been living: “We are working towards some self sufficiency, learning a lot and making many mistakes.” Arghhhhh!! I cringe every time I see this. When we humans try to live and learn without community, it’s almost like we lose our whole history, whole knowledge base. And self-sufficiency is not the aim; self-reliance plus interdependence is.)

When what we need is to be bringing our highest creativity and energy to building social capital; learning how to live well in dense settlements (so that the ecosystems can recover, and so that we can flexibly accommodate fluid migration of peoples fleeing drought, famine, and other disasters). Maximizing abundance by doing more with less space; going vertical with plantings; stacking and packing beneficial interrelationships among things and people to maximize food and energy and beauty and learning and emotional nurturance and everything else we need; learning how to live deeply interconnected with each other.

Not just any women though. Black women and indigenous women. We need to listen to them; boost their signal.

Also: Men aren’t the problem; patriarchy and misogyny are. Including the internalized patriarchy, internalized misogyny that we all — including women — carry.

Recommended reading for all feminists: Hood Feminism — book by Mikki Kendall.

Recommended reading for all white women who aspire to be truly feminist and anti-racist: They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South — book by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers.

intersectionalfeminism
decolonization
dismantlewhitesupremacyculture

Well sure it is if we seek out the biggest throwback, hatebag wackadoodles we can find, and follow them down the rabbit-hole! Don’t do this.

We know there are whole groups of people who regret the outcome of the Civil War etc. We don’t have to follow Homophobic Daughters of the Confederate Republic of Caucasia or whatever to know this.

Same goes for environmental stuff.

The thing to do on TikTok (as in all of life) is follow topics that we ourselves love and are passionate about, and/or want to see more of in the world. I follow a lot of decolonization, anti-racism, Degrowth, ecosystems restoration, as well as my personal enjoyments such as reading, sewing and beading, DIY upcycle, earth-based spirituality.

My TikTok Tip for ecosocial activists: Type any of the following, or similar, into the search field of the app:

antiracism
antiracismtiktok
decolonize, decolonization
intersectionalfeminism
transactivists
indigenoustok
nativetiktok

Also, follow these creators:

Portia Noir
Desiree B Stephens
White Woman Whisperer

… and as many other Black, intersectional activist women as possible. My TikTok feed is a constant wealth of learning & activism.

Hang out there and listen! So much learning, and you’ll get lots of talking-points for addressing the fellow white people, homophobic/anti-trans people in your circles.

Glad you asked!

We can change the ratio of pavement to greenery in cities. By becoming active citizen-participants in our city governments and other local governments. Many cities are reducing their road/parking area and increasing food-growing area, forest parks etc. We can reduce automobile dependency while at the same time bringing more food into cities.

Also: we can get excessively restrictive zoning and building codes changed in order to promote more sustainable housing in cities.

Another idea: we can amplify anti-consumerist fads such as the DIY clothing movement. The clothing industry has a huge footprint; although they are working on making some changes we every day people can do a lot to move the needle.

In one of my businesses, landscaping, I am working to normalize the use of quiet hand- tools and the planting of native vegetation and trees rather than huge expanses of turf grass that require machinery to maintain. The landscaping industry has a huge footprint but we can spark a beneficial shift. Actually that is already happening with things such as the rewilding movement, pollinator yards, and so on.

We can pledge to no longer own a motor vehicle. We can pledge to no longer fly in airplanes. I have done both.

We can radically reduce our electricity consumption. In our household we basically only need electricity for our phones. Although we do use it for convenience to cook, and one housemate has a TV, we do not use air conditioning or water-heater or clothes dryer or any other major energy hogs.

We can choose to share living quarters instead of living alone. We can share tools and resources instead of each of them to have our own.

We can strive to eat a more local and plant centered diet. Where I live it’s a little bit challenging but not impossible, and I am always working on it: increasing my repertoire of vegan meals, growing at least a few greens at home, etc.

Money: We can refuse to participate in the stock market, and keep as little money as possible in banks, instead investing in our homes, supporting local businesses, reskilling education, our own physical and mental wellness, mutual aid, neighborhood toolsheds, community gardens…

Work: We can limit our working hours and income to some basic minimum level needed to get our needs met. We can transition away from extractive “jobs” into regenerative occupations. I have done this for a while.

We can give indigenous people their land back. They are the best caretakers of ecosystems worldwide.

This is just a couple of things off the top of my head. None of these will by itself make a huge shift. But millions of other people all over the world are doing what I do and doing similar. Other millions and millions of people are doing other beneficial things. It all adds up and it is contagious.

UPDATE 6/19/23: Also: We can engage in visual storytelling. The power of story and image is immense. I have written about this on many occasions, and am sharing here today something wonderful that came across my feed (thanks Laura L Z!).

From The Nature Of Cities, one of my favorite organizations, this roundtable about the power of visual storytelling to address ecological crisis, social injustice:

“Although the comics landscape is dominated by superheroes doing classic superhero things, there is a growing movement of comics that have environmental and social justice aims. The Nature of Cities has launched a comic series called NBSComics — Nature to Save the World, a collaboration funded by NetworkNature and the European Commission on nature-based solutions for environmental challenges. Rewriting Extinction (with almost 2M readers on webtoon) is a remarkable series of comics with a community of over 300 artists, scientists, and storytellers. Le Monde Sans Fin (World Without End), by artist Christophe Blain and scientist Jean-Marc Jancovici, is a best-selling graphic novel exploring energy and climate change. As José Alaniz discusses in this round table, even Superman, in Superman for Earth, struggled against ecological degradation. There are an increasing number of examples.”

Here’s the link to the whole roundtable – 23 comic creators, scientists, & practitioners share their thoughts. “Visual storytelling: Can comics help us advance solutions to our social and environmental challenges? Yes.”

Another one from the “It’s not gonna work” files. (I know I bring this up a lot, but we’re all working with a lot of pushback even from our in-groups. So we need all the inspiration, encouragement, and practical talking points we can get.) This came up in one of the collapse-focused groups:

Unless you can find some large changes, or can collectivize a society into making lots of small changes, I don’t think the answers you get are going to matter.

My response:

Great, then we ARE going to find some large changes, and we ARE going to collectivize the society into making lots of small changes. Good answer!! And I love your wording.

Large changes: Pick a big sector. Food, water, shelter (include both buildings and clothing), transportation, energy, and community. And set about being a mini trim tab. Even if you only influence one or two other people, they will go on to influence others. Some of you might remember that shampoo commercial from the 1970s. “They told two friends and they told two friends and so on and so on …”

If you prefer to go to a larger stage, easy peasy! Start communicating with your local government and corporations. If you feel so inclined move on up to higher levels of government and bigger corporations. Or you could become a social media mega influencer if you are so inclined to try.

One of my big sectors where I choose to work is landscaping. It has a huge footprint the way we’re doing it right now. Although I am only a micro influencer at best, I have still made some inroads in my community.

Collectivize the society into making lots of small changes: that’s even easier! It’s actually happening right now. It happens 24 seven all around us. Just jump in anywhere you feel drawn.

Keep going! We in the rich industrialized nations, particularly those of us who are in the Boomer generation and older, have a lot of catching up to do, to set things right.

By the way, we’re allowed to have fun! In fact, I would say we have to have fun. If we’re not having fun, we won’t motivate anyone to make any changes.

Speaking of fun, one of the best ways to be a force for social change is through art and story. Go get ’em! Write that book, paint that painting, stage that play … even if it’s just for an audience of one or two or seven at first.

PS. I’m not saying it’s all of us, but it’s definitely some of us who are pretending to ask one question when we actually mean something else.

So when we ask that question, “Is it really going to work?” What we’re really saying is, “I want some assurance that it’s going to work, or else I see no point in struggling against the mainstream current.

“If it’s not going to work, I want to know, so I can take it as permission to just hang out in the cushy, consumerist, paycheck-and-401k-job, business-as-usual economy.”

But I think we all know the real answer to that, or else we wouldn’t be in these groups.

Whether it’s going to “work” or not should not be our criterion for doing the right thing.

Also “works” and “doesn’t work” is not a black-and-white thing. There’s a whole continuum. Everything you do works. Any little thing we do to dismantle the extractive consumerist economy helps reduce suffering in the world, even by a little bit.