Kitchen Garden Forum

I am certainly worried we are well on the road. Sometimes it feels as if I am shouting in a sterile landscape and nobody can hear.

Most people on the planet, child or adult and especially in the industrial Western World, are indifferent to the world of plants. I can be just as guilty as everyone else. But our appreciation of them, recognition of the animal kindom’s absolute dependence upon them (that includes us) and our stewardship of them is at best minimal. You can read a description of the present situation in Plants are of No Consequence. Although I say it myself, it is horrifying. The plant world is involved in virtually every discipline from cooking, gardening, botany and medicine through physics, history, chemistry and the arts to sociology, politics, economics, culture and religion – and everything in between like the froth on beer, the slipperiness of the sludge around an oil drill or the pit props in a mining shaft.

Please respond somebody. Can anybody come up with practicable ways to turn this around?

I was inclined to reply to the question with the obvious answer' "I did live in 1984. And not a very pleasant time to be around either: height of Thatcherism, IRA Brighton hotel bombing, miners' strike............"

Otherwise I am in the dark as to the purpose of this post. If anyone wants to try and understand the point Jemimap seeks to make the full text is HERE. I'm afraid to say that I read it and am little/none the wiser

Many thanks for your response. It was disappointing to realise however that I would have been better advised to have placed the 1984 in the title in single quotes. Your knowledge of Orwell will fill the rest in.
If you have had an opportunity to read Plants are of No Consequence I am sure you will well understand how man is becoming more and more divorced from the plant world. That is my concern - and of course I am not alone in that view. Our reliance (and that of the rest of the animal kingdom) upon the plant world is absolute, even in this modern day and age. Television programmes on plants rarely (if at all) celebrate their involvement in human lives. The programmes concentrate on cooking, gardening, botany and medicine as do the media as a whole and, of course, the publishers. There is one (hundreds actually) of the most fascinating and absorbing stories out there and I would welcome your practicable suggestions, which I am sure you can come up with, on how best to reach and entertain those millions of people who have as yet been unaware or indifferent to them.

Hmm. Whilst I'm all for more people getting involved in gardening and allotments, I'm not sure that a rambling anecdotal essay dressed as a pseudo-scientific paper is the right way to go about it. Talking is one thing, getting out and digging or picking your beans is altogether different (and better)!
Vivien

Jemimap wrote:Many thanks for your response. It was disappointing to realise however that I would have been better advised to have placed the 1984 in the title in single quotes. Your knowledge of Orwell will fill the rest in.
If you have had an opportunity to read Plants are of No Consequence I am sure you will well understand how man is becoming more and more divorced from the plant world. That is my concern - and of course I am not alone in that view. Our reliance (and that of the rest of the animal kingdom) upon the plant world is absolute, even in this modern day and age. Television programmes on plants rarely (if at all) celebrate their involvement in human lives. The programmes concentrate on cooking, gardening, botany and medicine as do the media as a whole and, of course, the publishers. There is one (hundreds actually) of the most fascinating and absorbing stories out there and I would welcome your practicable suggestions, which I am sure you can come up with, on how best to reach and entertain those millions of people who have as yet been unaware or indifferent to them.

Can you start the ball rolling with your suggestions first

That this article is pseudo-scientific claptrap based on anecdotes notwithstanding, the reality is that things are not as gloomy as it makes them out to be. My wife is a trained boffin and spends half her time visiting schools giving lessons based around natural history and, especially, gardening. She is constantly surprised and delighted at the response she gets from her pupils, many of whom show insight into the subject beyond their years. Most of the schools she visits, many of them in inner cities, have thriving vegetable plots tended with great enthusiasm. For sure each school has a few dissenters, but it will always be thus.

My father, as a boy, had no idea that milk came from cows, or that potatoes grew in the ground. He got a taste for the country life when he was evacuated, so much so that he worked as a farm labourer for several years after he left school and took particular delight in working with the horses. He kept an allotment for over thirty years.

I am dismayed by such negativity.

Don't want to go off topic, but I am loving the idea of a 'trained boffin'.

Hi Jemimap. Forgive me if I appear obtuse but I don't understand. I was under the impression that Humankind was extremely involved with plants, both ornamental and edible, amateur and professional.

If "we" were not, surely there would be no Botanists, Farmers, Gardeners,etc etc? There would certainly not be the vast amount of media coverage, television/radio programmes, books, magazines, Garden Centers, Parks, public gardens, campaigns to save Rain Forests and the like.

To quote my dear departed Grandad, the article "Speaks and says nowt" as far as I'm concerned.
Cheers.

Elaine wrote:To quote my dear departed Grandad, the article "Speaks and says nowt" as far as I'm concerned.

A very good point extremely well put. I don't suppose he was a trained boffin, by any chance?

Hi Felix. No he wasn't. He was a joiner by trade, gardener by nature and a very astute man!

Many thanks all of you for responding. I hope however that, when somebody else comes along and explains the issue far better than it would seem I have, you will find it possible to think a little more deeply about it and perhaps give them more generous support. The issue in the body of the thread was genuine with no ulterior motive. It is sad you could not help.

I'm sorry but I have not a clue what this is all about, if that is of any use to you.

As for 1984 thank God for Thatcher at least she held it at bay but it does feel like living in 1984 now. I think Eric and Tony were related

Perhaps Prince Charles could help.

Best wishes

Barney

its amazing that even now mrs t is either reverred as the best prime minister of recent times , or villified as responsible for the mess that poor gordon has been landed with. think its time I put the shovel away and found the tin hat again

Cider Boys wrote:As for 1984 thank God for Thatcher at least she held it at bay but it does feel like living in 1984 now. I think Eric and Tony were related

Perhaps Prince Charles could help.

Best wishes

Barney

As a lifelong atheist I'm glad not to give thanks to your god, Barney

Jemimap

Sorry to take your thread off topic, but, I'm afraid, the mention of Thatcher just makes me see RED.

I'm not sure I understand the point of your post. I should have thought that people have always been very conscious of the relationship between the human/animal world and the plant world - nowadays increasingly aware.

You say:
I would welcome your practicable suggestions, which I am sure you can come up with, on how best to reach and entertain those millions of people who have as yet been unaware or indifferent to them.
I have to ask Where do you propose to start?

To quote Archimedes extolling the virtues of the lever and fulcrum:

δος μοι που στω και κινω την γην
Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth.