As we head into an increasingly alarming and unpredictable future, we have a powerful ally standing ready to mitigate the impacts and build our resilience – we just need to mobilise its transformative potential.
There’s trouble ahead – and I’m here to help.
I hear you’re having a spot of bother facing up to the enormity and urgency of our climate and nature crises. As our government, I’m told that you’re falling way, way short of what’s required of you to look after your citizens as our living world enters a volatile and unpredictable new phase. I’ve seen the reports, the predictions, the alarming scientific prognoses, but it’s obvious that you’re not exactly taking this stuff seriously. We’re facing a national emergency like no other, and you must act – pronto.
So I’d like to help – if you’ll let me. You’ll need to loosen up your imagination and think outside the usual bureaucratic, techno-fix box; instead, imagine yourself scattering seeds – including actual real ones – into our communities and society at large. I do low-tech and grubby fingernails. We’re facing some serious stuff, and you need to sit up and step up if we’re going to grow ourselves a secure path through what will become a difficult, testing and worrisome future. If you sow, I’ll nurture – because I’ve got this.
Will you let me help?
I know food security is giving you the jitters. It should – big ones. But I possess all the tricks and techniques to get us growing food in even the smallest and unlikeliest of spots. You already know that our food growers are struggling with increasingly topsy-turvy weather that’s making sowing, growing and harvesting a bigger challenge than ever before; that’s why shop shelves are often bare of certain fresh produce. It won’t get better any time soon. I can’t promise to feed the nation, but I can be a buffer as the going gets tougher, helping us to feel more secure.
So let me get everyone growing, and help me put local food resilience on the map. You can dream up a newsworthy soundbite if you want to – I’m all ears – but let’s get on with it. Let’s persuade, cajole and inspire people to grow more of their own food, to take on an allotment, to join in with community growing; we desperately need more cohesion, not division. I always bring folk together.
Your top-down job, as government, is to make sure every new home that’s built, whether it’s a house or a flat, has access to some land to grow on – call it a Citizens’ Foodright – and to enshrine new, modern and workable allotments in every new development, whether it’s on the edge of town, or a whole new town. Ditch the facile ‘build, baby, build’ and get with ‘grow, baby, grow’ – that’s where I’m at.
Back me in cultivating everyday, street-by-street resilience across our communities – a green, living, edible armour that’ll see us tough out the turbulent times ahead. Make me irresistible and addictive, even to someone with just a window box. Millions are already hooked on me, but we need millions more. We can do this together.
We all know that flooding is worsening and becoming more frequent as our weather becomes more extreme. I can come to the rescue by filling our urban gardens and green spaces with plants, whose roots dig deep and help the soil to soak up the heavy rains that cause flash flooding. We can capture rain in water butts to power what I do, so let’s roll them out – for free. I might not be able to stop flooding altogether, but I can slow the run-off of home-wrecking rainfall by allowing soil, not overburdened drains (and the polluted rivers they flow into) to take the strain.
But you’ll have to do your bit too, by changing the way we do paths, drives and patios, mandating that they must be porous so they absorb rainfall rather than shedding it to become someone else’s problem. It’ll be tough love from above for homeowners, but everyone will benefit (you can send polluting plastic grass packing at the same time). I’ll be on hand to make it the most beautiful and life-enhancing flood-proofing push there’s ever been. It’ll be beautiful, place-appropriate and humming with wild life.
Trust me – I know about this stuff. It’s what I am.
Nature’s hum is faltering – insects in particular are on the back foot, their numbers declining – and I can help to remedy that. I’m an unrivalled and unstoppable force when it comes to nature-based solutions, so tap into me. Bring on those new planning rules so that everyone can access a patch of earth, where they can grow, organically, by themselves or with others, the plants that experts tell us can give insects and so much other wild life its best shot at adapting to the rollercoaster new world we’re in. I create sanctuary, too.
I can help prepare us for a time when multiple summer heatwaves are the norm, by growing shade-casting trees that’ll give us respite by day and by night. There’s no time to lose; trees grow slowly, so you’ll need to kick-start our urban cooling with some hard cash. And fast. You provide the dosh and I’ll plant, baby, plant.
You can make my whole job a lot easier by getting your finger out and consigning climate- and habitat-wrecking peat-based compost to the history books. It’s time to ditch ‘dither and delay’, shred misinformation and ignore pro-peat lobbyists – send them packing and secure me a peat-free future. After decades of wrangling, it’s not too much to ask. Everything I do must be as earth-friendly (and peat-free) as possible, so that I’m always giving more than I take from our living world – and I have so much to give.
If you really want to invest in me and supercharge everything I can do to help steer us, collectively, through an uncertain, calamitous future, do this: give me an army of greenhouses so my magic can spread across the nation. Give everyone the chance to access a space, or a shared space, warmed by free and non-polluting sunshine, safe from the ravages of wild weather, and watch society bud up and blossom. Provide the grants towards buying (or retrofitting) a greenhouse, big or small, then stand back and watch me grow!
Look on as our nation falls in love with everything I have to offer: local organic food, regular exercise, camaraderie, empathy for nature, coolness, improved mental health, reduced flood risk and sanctuary for wild life – not forgetting the sheer uplifting, everyday beauty that’s me doing what I do.
There’s trouble ahead, and I’m here to help steer us through it, to make us feel a little more secure, and to sow solutions we can all be part of. I’m raring to grow, so don’t dismiss me – mobilise me.
Still wondering who I am? My favourite colour’s green, and my mission is to get you to grow, baby, grow, like never before. Yes, you’ve twigged it.
I am gardening.
Text and images © John Walker. Allotment image: DepositPhotos
Join John on X @earthFgardener