Many gardeners will remember with delight reading Gaia’s Garden by author and activist Toby Hemenway, originally published in 2001. Toby passed in Sebastapol, CA in 2016, but not before he lit a spark and passed a metaphoric mantle to today’s guest, Matthew Trumm. Matthew went on to learn under Dr. Elaine Ingham, among other mentors and from the wisdom of the land itself – near rural Berry Creek California before the #CampFire and now on an urban lot in Oroville, CA.
I was introduced to Matthew by our producer Matt Fidler who mentioned over Zoom one day in lockdown: you have to see this guy’s backyard – it’s amazing! And so today, Matt and I take you on an actual field trip to the energetic, permaculture, regenerative urban agriculture, food forestry and indigenous-land-stewardship-informed back yard paradise Matthew Trumm tends and grows with. He is a teacher, designer, activist, and a Gardener with a capital G.
You can follow Matthew's work online at Treetoppermaculture.org or on Instagram @treetop_permaculture
YOU CAN SUPPORT MATTHEWS Non-Profit work here: https://gofund.me/64ea7d87
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JOIN US again next week, when we remain focused on the regenerative home garden, specifically taking on the ubiquitous turf lawn in the most life affirming of ways. Gardener Owen Wormser, author of Lawns into Meadows, joins us from Western Massachusetts to share his evangelism helping people to grow beautifully beyond lawn– listen in!
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Thinking out loud this week:
Hey It’s Jennifer –
As I sit and write and garden and live generally with one of the largest fires in California’s recorded history burning to the north and east of my place, many acres burned, more homes, an historic town – and the word and concept of Regenerative sits with me.
Regenerative Ag, regenerative ecology, regenerative action and mindset.
Matthew Trumm and the many many other regenerative mindset folks have with loving observation and experimentation shortened the cycle of creating soil, of regenerating systems on backyard but also landscape scales, They are object lessons for trying such ourselves.
As a mere human with a relatively short life span in the scheme of things I see a “problem” – or more accurately finally begin to grasp a problem in my little pea brain – like the climate crisis born of more than a century of industrialized and consumer life out of balance, centuries of systemic racism compounded daily, an economic model that relies on inequity, and I really want to fix it. I want a silver bullet one answer fits all problems of all sizes and bam we’re back on the right track. But then I look again - however weary I might be in my limited perception, my own delusions of control, and my own tendency toward adult versions of childhood temper tantrums and moaning “But it’s just NOT fair” I want to wail – and when I look again – I am reminded that meteoric re-sets notwithstanding – that quick fix is not how things tend to happen on this generous ever turning planet. They are far more likely to be long game actions long game results – one plant dying and laying down its body and seed onto the receiving body of the planet.
That one plant – having germinated, flowered, and set that precious seed – now resting and waiting patiently while water, cold, wind, water, warmth and sun and dark of night accompanied by the many blessed decomposers – May we be daily grateful for every one of them from vultures to microbes – do their time sensitive work until that one plant many days or months later is now organic matter folded into that receiving body of earth once more.
Over and over – one plant’s composting, and its offering of the next generation of seed, one fire and its offering of the next season’s flush of ash fed growth restarting the slow forest succession cycle, one failure and its offering of lessons learned, one success and its offering of other lessons learned, one more daily attempt at gardening our lives with all such intention at a time. Compounded.
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