I love this guy’s TED talk on his subversive garden plot. His summary on how gardens will change the world is succinct and compelling.

For the last 10 years, I have been mulling around the idea of writing about subversive landscapes – landscapes that have a political agenda. Getting food from your own landscape is subversive, in the best kind of way: subversive landscape = subversive life. Which is why I made this site, in a way. While I do use this site as a resource and tool,  I wanted the message to be more positive – the word subversive has negative connotations, as much as I love the word and think it totally fits what needs to happen with gardens, plants, and people.

I use this site as an organizational tool to help me decouple from the sticky world of non-nourishing, resource-depleting, government-subsidized, corporate-commercial products, particularly in the food, personal hygiene, and home care categories. I say sticky because it is really sticky, and really pervasive – once I started reading labels and really digging for information, I found issues with almost every category of product that I was buying for my family from stores. I wanted a place where I could high-grade all my favorite recipes, resources, and information so I could get at it easily anywhere I went.

I made it public because my clients were asking what else they could do with all the perennial edibles I designed into their gardens, and because access to the reasons why these choices matter helps me regain resolve when I flag in the effort of going against the grain.

Is going against the grain in the little everyday ways of how I eat, wash, and celebrate a political act? Am I a subversive? To subvert is to “undermine the power and authority of an established system or institution.”  While I don’t quite feel like a rebel, renegade, or trouble-maker, I do feel ‘different’ because of my choices. I love that there is a growing buzz around these issues, and am so glad to see Roger Doiron’s work in this vein.

Roger’s website can be found here.