Shaping the World Through a Conscious Process of Encouragement & Discouragement

As the plants retreat into the underworld and we wrap up another season, our focus naturally shifts from the complex web of relationships that comprise the green world, to the curious continuum of human relationships that shape our culture and connect us to one another.

Over the years, through our work on the farm and within the fields of permaculture and ecological restoration, we’ve developed and refined an approach to landscape management that revolves around a deliberate process of encouragement and discouragement. For instance, instead of managing for the survival of individual plants, we engage in strategic interactions that encourage the survival and proliferation of specific plant communities. The plants are free to spontaneously emerge, grow, and reproduce as they would naturally. And we apply ourselves to supporting this process by introducing additional plants, spreading seed, and care-taking young populations. On the other side of the spectrum, species we would rather not see proliferate are collectively discouraged through a process of strategic interventions that limit their ability to emerge, grow, and reproduce in the landscape. It’s a gentle set of practices that, when sustained over time, dramatically influence the shape of our landscape through a collaborative relationship with the plant world.

It’s possible to harness this process of encouragement and discouragement applied to the plant world, to cultivate real change within our collective social landscape. Becoming conscious and deliberate about what we would like to encourage is a good start. What ideas do we want to share and see proliferate across our communication channels? What businesses and organizations do we want to encourage and see grow? What are we unconsciously encouraging through behavioral patterns, and how can we become more strategic and mindful? How can we catalyze our everyday choices and behaviors to support our vision of a world guided by the principles of mutual support and creative collaboration? These are the questions we are asking ourselves at this moment in time as we reflect on how we’ve grown this season, and what we will apply ourselves to cultivating in the future. By supporting what we believe in, we can reshape our communities and the world.