Principles of a Diverse Backyard

Here are the basic principles of my suburban backyard garden:

a) At least 300 genus of plants, with a heavy orientation on medicinals.
b) No chemicals or fertilizers. Reliance on what the garden itself produces.
c) Grow from seed wherever possible.
d) Use the apiary for pollination, not production.
e) Try to avoid carbon emissions, electricity, and artificial watering.
f) Seek natural solutions to pests.
g) Engage affordable solutions (seeds and tools mostly) to create a model that can be followed by any homeowner.
h) Most importantly, I garden for joy and love.

In my neighborhood, all of my neighbors spray various things on their yards and this is common practice around town. Fairfield County, CT also has some of the worst air quality in the country, due to the prevailing wind from New York City and New Jersey, and the presence of two major highways. We also have a terrible problem with deer who, without natural enemies here, devastate most plants shorter than six feet.

I started my backyard garden in the Spring of 2007, and in this blog I am relaying my experiences in the hopes that other people can share in my successes and failures. As more and more people transform their backyards into diverse eco-systems, we can change the air, water, and food quality of entire towns, states, and countries.

I invite and encourage any bee research teams to follow what is happening here. I don't need money, but I could use some guidance in order to maximize the value of this project as an example for the research community.

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Natural Diversity Leads to Healthy Living

Are you essentially a natural creature, or, the product of a technological and mechanical system?

Most people read this statement and think, "Of course, I am a natural creature." Yet we live in boxes, drive machines that pollute the air we breathe, and consume foods that we know are harmful. Then, we teach our kids to do the same. We don sunglasses to hide our eyes from the sun, burn fuel to keep our indoor environment at a steady 70 degrees all year, and buy tons of furniture and appliances for our comfort.

It is very difficult to step outside of the paradigm we have created for our lives, and see how, in everything we do each day, we separate ourselves from the natural world. As a society, we have so separated from our natural selves that we value life-longevity instead of life-happiness. To pursue life-longevity as the main goal, we have created our capitalist society and the modern medical establishment; to pursue life-happiness as the main goal, the honey-bee created the hive.

A honey bee's vision and only concern is the health of the hive. Bees will eat each other, kill a queen, commit suicide by stinging invaders, and banish their own brothers and sisters for the good of the hive. The honey bee shows its full commitment to the principal of everlasting spirit; bees willingly sacrifice their temporary bee-bodies so that the hive will remain. The hive itself is ever-regenerating, spawning thousands of new bees each day.

Bees live fully in the natural world, traveling for miles around the hive to collect honey, pollen and other goodies for the hive. Bees depend on their local surroundings for the health of the hive, and plants -- especially vegetables and fruits -- rely on bees for pollination. Bees and plants have a symbiotic relationship, so when one-third of the bee population world-wide dies in a single year (2007), that makes an important statement about the health of the plants that feed us.

There is tons of bee research going on to find the source of the problem. But the intuitive answer is the simple one: monoculture. Our society farms foods for profit: Larger crops are easier to harvest and produce more money, chemicals increase production, and honey bees are used as a crop production tools. By focusing on large crops, we have systematically removed plant diversity from the ground.

This discussion leads me to a simple conclusion. It is my goal to prove the following statement, by growing a diverse mini-culture in my 3-acre backyard. If I can do it, so can every other household:

"Bees require a diverse group of plants, especially herbs and medicinal plants, in order to maintain a healthy hive. And like the honey bee, people require a diverse diet also."

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Hints from the Honey Bee

The annihilation of the honey bee population in the last couple of years has caught the eye of beekeeper, farmers, Monsanto and other companies that sell farm goods. But the vast majority of Americans are unaware or uninterested in the significance of this blight. As long as supermarkets still have food to sell, life doesn't change for most people. Where I live in southern Connecticut, most food is shipped in from Florida, California, Chile and other far off places; this leaves a huge carbon footprint for our community every day by breakfastime, whether or not we drive an energy-efficient car.

Living in this community nearly my entire life, I know how hard it is to doff the eye glasses of the suburban mindset and see with a more circumspect vision. However, since 2002 I have been searching for a spiritual/holistic natural healing solution to a 1987 eye injury, and this has led me to a new understanding, appreciation, and vision of the natural world:

Nature is simple; using the simplicity of nature as a guide for our daily lives, we will be more healthy and more happy.

Interpreting this statement -- and proving that it works -- is the subject of this blog. Without some kind of visible proof, I risk being relegated to the ranks of other dead philosophers that become relevant only to college sophomores looking to fill the credit criteria for their major.

Enter the honey bee, that paragon of self-sacrifice showing humans through bee-genocide that our un-natural way of living will surely kill us. For without the honey bee, our race would surely perish. Continue >>