Principle #5: Create space for humans to interact with your refugia gardens, to encounter wildness, and to instill reciprocity and kinship.
For people to develop deeper relationships with nature, they need to experience connectedness with nature on a regular basis. This can and often does happen when people go on trips to places of profound beauty and majesty, such as a national park. But those experiences are fleeting; they do not necessarily change the human-nature relationship all that much. Worse, they can even contribute to a sense that nature is remote, isolated. In contrast, by including inviting spaces for lingering and connecting with nature, refugia gardens can instill a lasting sense of kinship and relational caring.
Numerous studies have demonstrated the usefulness of gardening for improving the human spirit and instilling a sense of connection with nature. We surmise that refugia gardening can raise this to a whole new level! First, by providing places for lingering in our refugia gardens, we encourage people to slow down. Busyness and distraction are the leading causes of our disconnection from nature. Second, by focusing our attention on ecological functions and reciprocities, refugia gardens provide opportunities for us to notice and connect with relationships in nature. They attune our minds and hearts to the pains inflicted by climate change and other disturbances. Most importantly, they help us understand nature’s mechanisms for healing and adapting in ways that give us hope.
Most interactions in the natural world happen at different scales than the ones to which we are most attuned. They are more sporadic: frenzied action followed by long periods where “nothing” happens. They are often happening simultaneously on a much smaller scale of time and space (microscopic) and on a much larger scale (evolutionary) than we typically sense. It takes time, patience, and some knowledge to notice and understand what is taking place at these scales. For this reason, we need to provide places in our refugia gardens where people will slow down, observe, and ponder. Never underestimate the power of a well-positioned garden bench and a well-used garden journal!
If you spend enough time attuned to the natural world, you will develop new insights, better understandings, and a sense of kinship. Filmmaker Martin Dohrn did this while taking refuge in his home garden in Bristol, England during the coronavirus pandemic. Armed with high-resolution cameras and mechanized equipment, he was able to eavesdrop on the lives of the bees in his garden. The result is a stunning 50-minute episode, “My Garden of a Thousand Bees,” which aired on PBS’s Nature program (and is available via this link or on the PBS Video app). The film opens our eyes to the personalities of each bee (leading Dohrn to give each individual a characteristic name) and the reciprocities in their relationships with the flowers in his garden and beyond. Watching the film, you gain a sense of kinship with the bees that Dohrn himself experienced.
Indeed, kinship with other living things evokes care, identity, belonging, reciprocity, and responsibility. Environmental writers call this relational caring. It entails these qualities:
- Attentiveness to human-nature interrelationships
- Sense of place indicative of personal meanings and attachments
- Dwelling as a way of thinking and ‘being’
Together, these qualities of relational caring lead to a sense of kinship with other species that inspires gratitude, hopefulness, and durable changes in behavior. For those who want to dig a little deeper into relational caring, we recommend this 2020 article by Moriggi et al.
Finally, it is also important to collaborate with neighbors for the purpose of interconnecting refugia gardens that can serve as wildlife corridors and refugia networks. Refugia networks provide safety and food security, while wildlife corridors facilitate individual movement and migration. Together, these allow gene flow that is crucial for maintaining a diverse gene pool within a population. And in turn, a diverse gene pool is essential for resilience to environmental disturbances and for adaptation to climate change. From a refugia gardener’s perspective, collaboration with neighboring gardeners is also helpful in the exchange of knowledge and insights, and occasionally for swapping plants – a type of insurance policy against loss and genetic erosion if a localized disturbance impacts part of your garden.
More Refugia Gardening Principles and Practices
1-Diversifying for the future
*Why not natives only?
2-Focusing on ecological functions
3-Enhancing natural landscapes
4-Co-creating with nature
5-Cultivating relational caring
Refugia Gardening 