For a century we have thought about progress in terms of machines. We have treated organisations as machines to work in. We explain them using engineering diagrams. We write business plans like car manuals. We plan change using metaphors like ‘construct’, ‘wiring’, ‘channels’. We have copied from machinery a view of efficiency that streamlines processes, separates tasks, removes variation, eliminates redundancy and centralises decisions. In farming and land management we have worked at an industrial scale, treating the land as a receptacle to hold fertilisers and pesticides. But the ecological problems we now face, and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, show us that this approach is brittle, fragile and dangerous.
Over-specialisation creates complex supply chains which chop up processes and isolate decision-making so that the slightest shift in circumstances lurches the whole over-engineered delivery into problems that no-one knows how to fix. On the contrary, a more localised system offers resilience through diversity and distributed decision-making. This type of system sees the inter-dependencies and the dynamics in motion, drawing on the intelligence of the people close enough to the problem to understand what needs to be done. Nature is resilient because it accepts redundancy; it finds multiple ways to solve a problem, not simply one way.
A machine mind engineers a solution and expects it to work every time. A garden mind knows that every solution is a compromise, with potential difficulties, and is alert to the need to constantly recreate balance.
Gardening is a process of constant adjustment and maintenance. Gardeners don’t make a perfect garden and leave it alone. We try things, we fail, we move things around. With garden mind thinking we don’t expect things to work comfortably, we understand the compromises and are vigilant and attentive to the things that can go wrong.
