How non-binary thinking could save the planet

... Or why we desperately need to rewrite our definitions of “wild” and “human” spaces

A meadow in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Photo: Darryl Moore

Boy/Girl. Good/Evil. Us/Them. We humans love a bit of binary. I mean, there’s no denying that compartmentalisation, generalisation, makes life so much simpler.

If you can stick a label on someone – or something – it eliminates the need to think, to ask questions, to understand. Too often, questions like “where are you from?” when we detect an accent, or “what do you do?” when we meet someone at a party, don’t stem from curiosity, but from a desire to place someone in a neat mental pigeonhole, to shortcut our way to a certain set of preconceptions. Oh, you’re a Polish bricklayer? That’s all I need to know, thanks. Ah, a Texan hedge fund manager, say no more! 

Binary thinking is the Interstate Highway that replaces the old meandering road; that furiously blazes past landmarks and pitstops; where the destination is all that matters, and the journey is no longer an adventure, but an inconvenience.

One of the key things that drew me to a career in journalism was that I am a curious person. I like to ask questions, to hear people’s stories, their perspectives. I like to be exposed to new ideas, new ways of thinking, even if they challenge my own beliefs. This curiosity was also what led me to launch The Earthworm – I wanted to hear and think about gardening in ways beyond those I had come across in the established horticultural media. 

Making time and space in our minds for nuance isn’t always easy, or comfortable, but it does make life a hell of a lot more interesting.

I find myself thinking about binaries an awful lot these days. Usually, of course, in relation to gender. The conversation around gender classification in the UK (as elsewhere) has become horribly toxic and highly politicised – to the extent that candidates’ positions thereon was one of the key considerations during the previous Tory leadership vote. In hindsight, maybe a little more scrutiny of economic policy, rather than the occupants of male and female changing rooms, would have come in handy. I don’t know, just a thought!

But for all the important educational efforts being made towards stripping away unhelpful stereotypes and preconceptions around gender roles and tropes, binary thinking still dominates many, many other aspects of our lives, and with equally counterproductive consequences. Not least in the worlds of horticulture, ecology and conservation.

L-R: Arit Anderson, Darryl Moore and Nigel Dunnett, speaking at the launch of Darryl’s new book: ‘Gardening in a Changing World’

Last week, I was invited to a book launch at the Garden Museum in London. The book in question is ‘Gardening in a Changing World: Plants, People and the Climate Crisis’ (out now!). Its author, Darryl Moore, is an award-winning garden and landscape designer (he won a Gold medal at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show for his St Mungo’s Putting Down Roots garden), but also an artist and an activist, whose work with organisations such as Cityscapes and thehub.earth revolves around taking a creative, inclusive and sustainable approach to greening our urban spaces.

I attended the book launch for a number of reasons. Firstly, because I am an admirer of Darryl’s work. Secondly, because the Garden Museum, which neighbours Lambeth Palace on the south bank of the River Thames, is a really lovely venue. Thirdly, because I love free wine. And finally, because of the format of the event, which was an on-stage discussion between Darryl, Gardeners’ World presenter Arit Anderson, and landscape design guru Nigel Dunnett (whose work on London’s Olympic Park featured in a recent edition of The Earthworm). 

The book itself has shot to the top of my reading list, and will no doubt be reviewed in a future instalment of The Earthworm. As for the conversation, it touched on some familiar subjects: the importance of green spaces for our health and wellbeing; the underappreciated power and importance of plants; the frighteningly destructive role that mankind has played in the decimation of wild places. All true, and all vitally important, but not necessarily new to me.

But just as I began to think that I’d heard it all before, I was shaken off my smug perch, when the conversation turned to binary conceptions.

City/Country. House/Garden. Built environment/Parkland. These tend to exist in diametrical opposition to one another, where the existence of one precludes the presence of the other. But why? When plants hold the key to our survival as a race – when they feed us, clothe us, mitigate flooding, absorb carbon, filter our air, cool our heating planet, enhance our mental health, and so much more – why do we insist on erecting little fences around them? Why are we so keen to keep them out of “our” spaces?

Another meadow in London’s Olympic Park, with planting design by Nigel Dunnett and James Hitchmough – blurring the boundaries between the wild and the urban. Photo: Darryl Moore

“Cities exist within the landscape, not the other way around,” said Darryl Moore. And of course, he’s so right. It is our binary thinking, our centuries-old psychological separation of civilised spaces and wild ones, that has driven a wedge between us and the natural world, and led the vast majority of people on this planet to lose all touch with – never mind respect for – non-human life. Our world has become hard, grey and sterile. What we are in desperate need of is more softness, more green, more muck. 

We gardeners mustn’t get complacent. We’re as guilty as anyone of dividing the world into human spaces and natural ones. Every time we pull a so-called weed, or squish a so-called pest, we are reinforcing the idea in our minds that our gardens are cultivated places, created by people for people – wildness ain’t welcome.

Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t pull weeds, or that I’m going to encourage slugs and snails to nibble on my dahlias. But the conversation that took place at that book launch did encourage me to reflect on how, when, why and where I could or should expect to see plants, and to welcome wildness. 

The natural world shouldn’t be something that we fight to keep out, or contain, or even think of as somehow ‘other’, but rather must be consciously and urgently integrated into more of our human environments. 

A budding “garden city” such as Singapore, with its emphasis on biophilic design – where plants are not cute add-ons, but fundamental features of new architectural and landscaping projects – should serve as a blueprint for urban areas all over the globe. Green roofs, green walls, “brownfield” meadows and orchards and nature reserves – there are so many opportunities to make our towns and cities healthier, happier, more beautiful places to be.

All we need to do is open our minds, and let in a little nuance. 

---

Epilogue

I tapped out the final few words above on my keyboard, closed my laptop screen, and walked into the kitchen to replenish my cup of tea. Before the kettle had even reached boiling point, I felt a vibration in my pocket. 

A series of messages was pinging into my inbox from friend and subscriber Elliott, whose work in Denmark places him at the forefront of questions around innovative, sustainable, and environmentally sensitive construction projects. 

“Reading a book at mo, and this passage made me think of you,” read the opening message. What followed was a couple of screengrabs of the pages of ‘Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World’ by Jason Hickel. And reader, in one of those curious coincidences thrown up every now and then by the universe, the passage in question happened to be exactly about the very subject covered in this post. 

So, as a little palate cleanser, here are some of Jason Hickel’s abridged thoughts on binary thinking, as relates to people and the natural world:

The 1600s gave rise to a new way of seeing nature: as something ‘other’, something separate from society – not just land, soils, forests and mountains, but also the bodies of human beings themselves. This new world view allowed capitalists to objectify nature and pull it into circuits of accumulation. But it also did something else. It allowed them to think of nature as ‘external’ to the economy. And because it was external it could be made cheap.

…

We are all heirs of dualist ontology. We can see it everywhere in the language we use about nature today. We routinely describe the living world as ‘natural resources’, as ‘raw materials’, and even – as if to emphasise its subordination and servitude – as ‘ecosystem services’. We talk about waste and pollution and climate change as ‘externalities’, because we believe that what happens to nature is fundamentally external to the concerns of humanity. These terms roll off our tongue and we don’t even think twice about them. Dualism runs so deep that it wriggles into our language even when we’re trying to be more conscientious. The very notion of ‘the environment’ – that thing we’re supposed to care about – presupposes that the living world is nothing more than a passive container, a backdrop against which the human story plays out.

– From ‘Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World’ by Jason Hickel

Thanks to Elliott for his message, and to Jason Hickel for the insightful words. And as if by magic, another book appears on my reading list!

---

Are you guilty of binary thinking, in and/or out of the garden? Where do you stand on (re)greening the built environment? Have you read either of the books cited in this post? Do you plan to? As ever, I love hearing from you – leave a comment and let me know!