#giftsfromplants
Gifts from Plants - an invitation to create a contagion of gratitude for photosynthetic organisms
#giftsfromplants
“Most people don’t really see plants or understand plants or what they give us, so my act of reciprocity is, having been shown plants as gifts, as intelligences other than our own, as these amazing, creative beings – good lord, they can photosynthesise, that still blows my mind! – I want to help them become visible to people. People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how it’s a gift. …..A contagion of gratitude, I’m just trying to think about what that would be like. Acting out of gratitude, as a pandemic. I can see it.” Robin Wall Kimmerer The Guardian May 2020
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, botanist, Distinguished Teaching Professor and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation*.
I have been feeling a sense of urgency to find ways to share (and expand) the ‘gifts from plants’ that as Foodweb Ecoliteracy Educators, we use to deliver our garden based program. I have wanted to show how as ecological literacy educators we perceive and utilise these ‘gifts’ in an educational capacity. On a personal level I have also been feeling a desire to drop some of the plant induced inspiration and overwhelm I seem to be drowning in at the moment during Spring in Tasmania. So here we are, welcome to #giftsfromplants
Already inspired by the work of Dr Robin Wall Kimmerer, I had decided it was time to write a blog sharing elements of our educative process whilst launching a social media campaign on behalf of photosynthetic organisms... and then I read the interview the above quote is taken from. Now that calling has more clarity (and a less aggressive approach 😆) - as most things do after reading her work. Anyone that knows me knows I don't do light, fluffy and flaky very well unless it's a pastry but I am deeply appreciative and grateful for life and perceiving it as a gift is a potent, rich and nourishing process. .. cringe you might but try it… for a week...see what happens. Whilst we’re pushing comfort zones, publicly engaging through the internet and social media are way out of mine, however, they do functionally have the capacity to carry this “contagion of gratitude” and let’s face it photos and videos of plants are THE BEST and surely one of the only justifiable reasons to be on your device!! (Insert sigh of relief for guilt free scrolling)
Modelling authentic gratitude has always been an integral part of the Foodweb Education pedagogy through creating a habit and culture of appreciation for each other’s efforts in the garden and kitchen as well as the varied abundance we nurture and discover within it. Our gardens also provide the physical, emotional and temporal space for children to be inspired and connect with and form relationships with plants and the broader natural world. Despite this, I don’t think I had recognised or had the capacity to articulate the immense potential power of gratitude and its contribution to the shift to a more regenerative way of thinking and living. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s suggestion to recognise all of the observations, environmental services, awe inspiring beauty, whimsical reflections and tangible goods delivered to us daily by plants as ‘gifts’ has provided our education approach another super simple but incredibly powerful tool for achieving many of the ecoliteracy education and emotional and social development goals of our program.
Our Foodweb Education framework uses the broad explaining power of the scientific patterns of energy flows, matter cycles and systems as thinking tools to understand change, connections and complexity on Earth. Our gardens are where we observe, interact with, apply and consolidate these tools and begin to embody the understandings they teach us. This forms the basis of our ecological literacy curriculum framework. Recognising and acknowledging the products, services and lessons from plants as ‘gifts’ could almost become a catch all our entire pedagogy. This perception shift then inspires other practices and protocols we draw on in our pedagogy like reciprocity, active listening, respect, responsibility, participation, pattern recognition, paying attention and becoming embedded in ‘place’ and reality. This simple act of reframing your perception of the multitude of both tangible and intangible plant 'products' you receive as gifts is open to everyone, everywhere of all ages. Incorporating it into your engagement with plants doesn’t detract from scientific approaches to understanding plants and it doesn’t detract from being completely overcome emotionally by the beautiful yet inextricably visceral nostalgia you may experience catching a whiff of Port Magnolia blossom.
Step 4 in Dr Natasha Myers How to grow liveable worlds: Ten (not-so-easy) steps for life in the Planthroposcene is to name our most powerful ally - plants. This will be explored in detail in another post but in terms of the simple practice of gratitude for photosynthetic organisms Dr Myers states“ That plants are literally breathing us into being. The possibility of their exhale is the possibility of our inhale….To begin in that gratitude carries the potential for such a profound shift in [peoples’] daily life...that seeing that plants are beings worthy of address has the potential to change everything - the very structure of our social worlds because we’re honouring a being that was previously considered to be in the background of our lives”. Dr Natasha Myers Growing the Planthropocene
#giftsfromplants is a call to all people everywhere to acknowledge and share the gifts from plants you receive. Let's pinpoint and share the day to day inspirations and lessons however big or small that are taught by plants. Let's create a gallery of gratitude to plants and other photosynthetic organisms. Even if you don't I will be so you can follow along #giftsfromplants. This is also about honing our skills of observing and paying attention to the patterns and roles and creative and adaptive capacity of all living systems - critical steps to reclaiming what Tyson Yankaporta illuminates as our role as a custodial species.... So you know hashtag your roses for a habitable planet people 😁
Much of our work through Foodweb Education involves making the invisible visible...and lovable 💖. So many of the important and transformative roles and relationships on Earth are performed by the tiniest overlooked organisms. Our Foodweb Education logo is inspired by diatoms the single-celled algae that live in houses made of glass, so that we carry with us each day the power, gifts, beauty and potential of the unseen living world.
#gifts from plants
Follow Foodweb Education on Facebook or Instagram as we invite followers to share a photo or video of plants or photosynthetic organisms and symbionts. I call on scientists, artists, gardeners, shop keepers, farmers, politicians, educators, my mum, your mum - everyone to share their #giftsfromplants. I personally want to learn and expand my gratitude for plants through yours (and see all your great plant pics). Please join in. Let this contagion begin and win!
Share this blog post and your learnings, love and inspirations from photosynthetic organisms using #giftsfromplants
Our eternal gratitude goes to Indigenous thinkers Robin Wall Kimmerer and Tyson Yankaporta and sharers of Indigenous wisdom everywhere for your generosity, inspiration, patience, forgiveness and eloquence.
Please check out their work:
Robin Wall Kimmerer
https://www.humansandnature.org/returning-the-gift
As well as many great podcast interviews available online
Indigenous wisdom, Scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
Tyson Yankaporta
How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Eight Aboriginal Ways of Learning
Aboriginal perspectives are not found in Aboriginal content, but Aboriginal processes
Foodweb Education is gratefully living, learning and working on and with Country, Aboriginal land, land that has never been ceded. We acknowledge and pay respect to the Aboriginal communities as the enduring custodians of these lands, seas, air and waterways on this continent now called Australia. Our ecoliteracy program observes and is strengthened by the traditional ecological knowledge, worldviews and protocols of the First Nations culture where we are teaching as well as the wider Indigenous protocols of First Nations people and land based cultures across our planetary home, Earth.