Thriving Kin Guilds Versus Dalek Hygiene: Permaculture/Rewilding Garden-Based Curriculum for Climate Survivance

• In Event: A Radical, Rooted Curriculum for Climate Catastrophe: Resourcefulness, Regeneration, Connection, and Community

Abstract

O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins

"Exterminate! Exterminate!"
- Daleks, Dr. Who

Objectives: Garden-based learning has a natural fit with designing a curriculum for climate survivance. Many curricular goals are implicit in learning to grow and use organic food, fibre, medicinal and dye plants, and learning across the curriculum in embodied, sensory ways in and with the garden (Mayer-Smith, Bartosh & Peterat, 2007). In a garden, practical skills in making and handwork meet cultural learning and community building, in a context offering connections with the living world and mindful, healthy practices (Kallis, 2014).

A closer engagement with garden-based learning reveals two very different approaches to this curriculum: a traditional gardening or agricultural approach that values cultivation of monocultures of annual plants and, as an unintended effect, fosters hatred and attempted extermination of particular robust species (named as weeds and invasives). In contrast, a permaculture/ rewilding approach values heterogeneity of species, kinship plant and animal guilds and ecologies, and an experimental, observational take on cultivating thriving communities under conditions of unpredictable climate change.

This paper contributes to the symposium experience by promoting recognition of these contrasting approaches through a qualitative study in a campus learning garden. The study sought ways to temper culturally-entrenched 'hygiene' approaches with permaculture experiences in a pedagogical design experiment.

Theoretical Framework: Drawing on the literature of garden-based learning (Williams & Dixon, 2013), permaculture and rewilding (Holmgren, 2011), curriculum theory (Villegas, Neugebauer & Venegas, 2008) and the author's decade-long engagement with campus learning gardens (Author & collaborators, 2019), this work juxtaposes theoretical approaches that embody greater and lesser degrees of human control and industrial-era objectives. A theoretical argument is made for reducing hygienic monocultures and increasing permaculture, regenerative and rewilding kin communities, both in learning gardens, and as a model for curricula of survivance more generally.

Methods & Data Sources: This study supported its theoretical argument with qualitative data from interviews and a pedagogical design experiment based in a university learning garden. Experimental data included interview transcripts, photographs, and student writing samples from practicum and internship experiences with teacher candidates and undergraduate students in an agriculture program at a major Canadian university's campus learning garden.

Results: Significant obstacles to a curriculum for survivance are identified in the data -- in particular, an expressed need by students to apply human control to every aspect of living garden spaces ('what got us into this mess to begin with'). A hybrid practice of 'both/and' (Cole, O'Riley & McConnell, 2002) in introducing food forest practices to the garden shows promise in bringing kinship guilds and communities to students via experiential learning, tempering the Dalek-like learned impulse to hate and 'Exterminate!' plants that could offer means to human survival.

Significance: Climate crises affect Earth and human societies in profound and unpredictable ways. Curricula of resilience, flexible thinking, and fostering thriving kinship communities each contribute to flexibility in response to the unpredictable and are vital for survivance. This paper advances theoretical and experimental work towards these curricula.

Author

• Susan Gerofsky, The University of British Columbia