In praise of more

The new method of landscaping is about having more nature. And that makes us happy.

By Simon Payn

When I was a child, I would visit my grandparents. They had a house with a large back yard and in that yard were fruit trees: shiny purple plums, pears like sandpaper, and apples. So many apples.

There were varieties I was told I couldn’t eat because they had to be cooked first. Granny filled these giants with gritty brown sugar and baked them so hot they burned me. And there were apples I could eat off the tree: red, crisp and shock-tart, they made me wince and smile at the same time.

On good years, there were so many apples we couldn’t keep up so they lay on the grass, bruised brown and rotting. But that was fine, because in the garage were boxes of them. Boxes and boxes.

I remember the excitement at the sheer abundance. So many apples that the tree could waste them.
There were always more.

As a child, having more was a good thing. More chocolate, more crayons, more presents under the tree.
We’re programmed to want more, even when we grow up. Especially when we grow up. More money, more house, more status.

Our society is built around the pursuit of more.

The thing is, as we know deep down but prefer to forget, our desire for more often means less of something else. More house means less forest. More stuff for us means less stuff for nature.

Here we are with more of everything while the turtles, eagles and woodchucks are squeezed into corners.

It’s hard to believe it wasn’t always like that. You’ve heard of the days when the sky was dark with Passenger Pigeons. Until we killed them all. Even in our lifetimes, there are fewer insects on the windshield. In the last 50 years wildlife abundance has dropped by two thirds.

We’ve put nature in a pot of water, the heat rising so slowly few notice.

Until one day it’s boiled to death.

What if we could flip the script? What if us having more meant nature had more too?

What if we could delight in the kind of abundance nature so freely gives, just as I did when I was seven?
What if our happiness and status was wrapped up not in more stuff but in more life?

I fell in love with natural gardening because it’s based on abundance. Every day I get to plant more nature.

Naturalistic planting, the way I do it at Grounded, uses more plants – we buy them small so they don’t break the bank. We pack them in closely, just like nature does. And we structure them in layers: more roots, more stems, more leaves, more flowers. A garden of 100 sq ft will get about 120 plants that quickly form a community that gives pleasure to us and sustenance to nature all year long.

I can’t help but think that having more nature would make our own lives bigger. Instead of living abstracted from the world through symbols and numbers, we would live as part of the world, helping the world be more.

Then one day, the sun rises over the misty lake and we walk outside, the birds are flitting between the trees. Flowers blaze as they greet the day and there’s a butterfly, gently opening and shutting its wings, a dazzle of orange.

And at that moment, we feel seven again, delighting in the abundance, the sheer more of the world.