Gardeners/Gärtner

by Veronika Degmayr, Alumni Certificate Student

Thinking back on my childhood now I remember afternoons spent adventuring in the woods, weekends catching fish with my dad at a nearby lake, bonfires and sky watching at night, digging holes into my parents´never too tidy lawn. Occasionally helping my Mum plant tomato bushes in her greenhouse but more often just reading a book amidst the greenery of our backyard garden. The sound of laughter and play filling the narrow residential streets of the small town in rural Bavaria I grew up in.

Photograph: Veronika Degmayr

A mighty romantic view on my own childhood; encouraged in parts by my current situation of living in the city, spending my time on designated bicycle lanes, in movie theaters, at university. Surrounded by concrete and colorful advertisement. Thinking about not spending time in nature. My thoughts about nature being filled with daunting visions for the future and unclear ideas of the concept itself and how we as a society are supposed to treat it. Caught up in this helpless unclairty I often times with for a simpler reality. One that allows me to act on my worries and to connect myself more directly to the land. Something that will help me to quiet down my bad conscience in relation to the enviromental problems we face.

Endowed with a sense for discovery I set out to find that reality I am so longing for. A journey of mind just as much as a journey in its literal sense. Travelling the world in the deliberate slowness that is required to allow the mind to keep up with all those new experiences and ideas, I finally realized that I'm not alone in my search for a meaningful way to act upon environmental worries. The world is brimful with caring people united in their pursuit to make it a better place. I became more and more aware of and participated in efforts to do so: urban gardening, switching to organic and fair trade products, buying less clothing, beach clean-ups, avoiding plastic packaging, raising awareness through rallies, sharing information and inspiration online, signing petitions, living a more environmental aware life through outdoor activities like surfing and hiking.

Photograph: Veronika Degmayr

However, in the end all that activism allowed me only small glimpses into a life more connected to nature, where the sole mention of the word environment won't cause negative thoughts but rather a feeling of awareness and appreciation for the intricate way in which environmental processes shape our world and everyday lives. More often my activism would make me even more aware of environmental problems and over time I started to feel rather ridiculous and pretentious talking and writing and pretending to do something about these problems, surrounded by - without a doubt well meaning and idealistic - city dwellers, mostly academics talking and writing about these same problems and possible solutions without any real change taking place.

My own ridiculousness becomes especially tangible when talking to my family members. While I more or less successfully try to raise even just a handful of fresh herbs on my balcony with the intention to save the world, they harvest - and have being doing so for decades - most of their vegetables and fruits from their own backyard gardens. Continually growing their knowledgebase on environmental systems and safeguarding social-ecological knowledge. Nourishing a naturally grown connectedness with their surroundings, shaping them at the same time, leading a life that I feel might be the modest answer to at least some of our environmental and social problems.

Photograph: Veronika Degmayr

Still little attention has been paid to rural backyard gardeners and their way of seeing nature and interacting with it. Consistent with my role as the theorist in my own family I feel an urge to explore this natural and unquestioned connectedness I briefly got to experience as a kid by giving the gardeners in my family a voice and providing outsiders and myself with a fresh view on rural backyard gardening. I‘m trying to give this voice not because they need or want or even ask for one. They simply deserve a voice. And some of us may learn from it.
Is this connectedness I feel exists a reality beyond personal experience? How does it play together with practical and theoretical knowledge about gardening and ecosystems? What role does intergenerational knowledge-transfer – put in train hundreds of years back - play in safe-guarding these different kinds of knowledge and connectedness that I feel are and will be an important resource for the protection of environmental systems and processes?

Photograph: Veronika Degmayr