We Are the ARK: Returning Our Gardens to Their True Nature Through Acts of Restorative Kindness

by Mary Reynolds, Ruth Evans (Illustrator)

Overview

“Reynolds gives us a much-needed reason for hope. The gardener, the conservationist, the city planner, and the nature lover will all be inspired for this wonderful book shows how thousands of even small wildlife friendly gardens can provide habitat for embattled wildlife around the world.” —Jane Goodall, Phd, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace 

Individuals can’t save the world alone. But if millions of us work together to save our own patch of earth—then we really have a shot. How do we do it?  With Acts of Restorative Kindness (ARK). An ARK is a restored, native ecosystem. It’s a thriving patch of native plants and creatures that have been allowed and supported to re-establish in the earth's intelligent, successional process of natural restoration. Over time, this becomes a pantry and a habitat for our pollinators and wild creatures who are in desperate need of support.

These ARKs will become the seeding grounds for our planet’s new story. They will be sanctuaries for our shared kin—the rooted and unrooted—and safe havens for the magic and abundance of the natural world. Most importantly, the ARK-building actions are within our control and laid out here in We Are the ARK. In these inspiring pages, discover how one person’s actions can effect big change in this world. Even the tiniest postage stamp patch of land matters! Together we are building a patchwork quilt of life that will wrap its way around this planet.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643261782
Publisher:	Timber Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/25/2022
Pages:	276
Sales rank:	268,923
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Mary Reynolds is a reformed internationally acclaimed landscape designer. The youngest woman in history to win a gold medal for garden design at the Chelsea flower show in 2002, she has since given that all up to be part of the solution to the crisis we are all living through, the climate and biodiversity collapse. Mary is the bestselling author The Garden Awakening, and a motivational speaker and founder of the global movement We Are The ARK.

Table of Contents

Preface: What This Book Is About 9

ARKs and the Great Remembering 13

Birth of We Are the ARK 15

The Garden Industry and the Great Forgetting 24

Guardians, Not Gardeners 33

The Science Bit and ARKing Aims 37

Our Shifting Baseline 39

Three Basic Laws of Ecology 41

Seeds of Restoration 46

How ARKing Differs from Large-Scale Rewilding 52

ARKing Aims 56

ARK Design and First Steps 63

First Steps in Building Your ARK 65

Landscape ARKitecture for Different Parts of Our Shared Planet 82

The Plants That Build an ARK 93

Why Native Plants? 95

The Plant Layers of an ARK 109

Developing a Diverse ARK Ecosystem 125

Sowing or Restoring an ARK Lawn or Meadow 127

Creating a Woodland System 138

Extra Layers of Creature Support 155

Embrace the Mess! 156

Water Homes 167

Bird and Bat Supports 178

Minding the Tiny and Invisible Kingdoms 187

Reversing Insectageddon 188

The Kingdoms Beneath Our Feet 203

Grow Your Own Food! 213

The Nutty Food System 214

Change from the Ground Up 216

Feed the Soil, Feed Your Body 221

Practices for Food Self-Sufficiency 225

Share and Create a Community 231

Wider ARKevism 233

ARKs on School, Public, and Commercial Lands 235

Political ARKevism 240

Conclusion: Reimagining Living in Harmony 253

Appendix: Getting Started 258

References and Resources 260

Acknowledgments 266

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

08/01/2022

In this impassioned plea to restore native ecosystems, landscape designer Reynolds (The Garden Awakening) sets out to recruit green “warriors” to build ARKs, or “Acts of Restorative Kindness,” on their land. Reynolds sees monocultural lawns as “a symbol of disconnection from and suppression of our wild nature,” and suggests that many of the best-intentioned gardens are actually “green deserts” filled with nonnative plants that “monopolize the attention of pollinators” and “sever the food web.” Those looking to turn their gardens into ARKs should overcome “the shame of having a messy garden”; abstain from using fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides; cut back on concrete usage in lanscaping so as to “let the earth breathe as much as possible”; and plant native flora. Reynolds emphasizes the importance of having a variety of plants (seeds, trees, and weeds all play a role in a healthy ecosystem), and fostering “different layers of ecosystem maturity” (including short grass, long grass, and scrubs). New gardeners might have a hard time getting on board with ideas such as ditching all nonnative plants, but for those passionate about having their backyards be “part of the solution,” Reynolds’s message will ring loud and clear. Gardeners intrigued by rewilding practices will find this worth a look. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Inspirational for all.” —Library Journal

“Mary Reynolds gives us a much-needed reason for hope. The gardener, the conservationist, the city planner, and the nature lover will all be inspired for this wonderful book shows how thousands of even small wildlife friendly gardens, including school gardens, can provide habitat for embattled wildlife around the world.” —Jane Goodall, Phd, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute UN Messenger of Peace 

“Native-plant gardening has many boosters, but Reynolds and illustrator Ruth Evans package their advocacy in an especially coherent, homeowner-friendly way, deftly outlining the problem.” —Booklist   

“In this exquisite manifesto, Mary Reynolds brilliantly reconceives what the land around our homes and communities could be.” —Paul Hawken, author of Regeneration

“Mary has seen the future of conservation. You may be surprised to learn that it is you!” —Doug Tallamy, author of Nature’s Best Hope  

“A highly readable manifesto on future gardening from a great communicator in which there is hope on every page.”—Gardenista

“Restoring healthy and biodiverse patchworks of the earth is essential for maintaining a livable planet. If you feel hopeless and like you can’t individually make a difference with climate disruption and biodiversity loss, please read this book. It’s a great blueprint for having an impact on your immediate environment and becoming a steward of nature.” —Julia Jackson, founder Grounded.org 

“A visual, literary, and poetic masterpiece. A manifesto for not just rewilding our land, but for reigniting our inextricable connection to nature and agency as stewards of our planet.” —Shyla Raghav, Shyla Raghav, Head of Partnerships, CO2, TIME 

“Mary Reynolds argues for a radical shift in how and why we garden.”—Horticulture

“Expertly written, thought-provoking and inspiring, it shows how great garden design can respond to the environmental challenges we’re facing.”—The Irish Times

“This illustrated book demonstrates that if people worldwide conduct acts of restorative kindness, the planet’s natural ecosystem could be restored. That will take enabling native plants and creatures to do what they do naturally as well. In short, this is an absorbing book of hope that indicates how collective action can preserve much.”—Library Journal

“This marvelous, insightful book is a rallying cry to all garden owners, nature lovers, and practical ecologists. It imagines a future that remains ours to make if we just give nature a helping hand.” —Tim Smit, co-founder Eden Project  

“A truly beautiful book: inspiring, educational, and uplifting. It helps remind us where our real home is and how to get back to it.” —David Flynn, The Happy Pear 

“We are the ARK is a remembrance of our earth being, of care and kindness, and of diversity and cooperation. It reminds us that we are the earth, that earth care is the essence of our being, and helps us return the earth to the fullness of her life, peace, and abundance through our caring, sharing, and gratitude.” —Dr. Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya, and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy 

“Mary’s work is brilliantly simple, and simply brilliant. It offers rare inspiration in dark times. Buy the book and get going.”—Paul Kingsnorth, co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project 

“A climate solutions book…that is proactively solutions-focused.” —Worth

“Proactively solution focused.” —Yahoo! Finance 

“We Are the ARK is both an inspirational song of praise for the natural world and an informative guide with actionable steps each of us can take to return our plots to what Reynolds calls “habitat and pantry” in support of pollinators and wildlife.” —The Seattle Times

“Informative, inspirational, and above all a challenging read.” —Gardenrant

“An accessible dive into working with what’s around us to make our spaces true ecosystems.” —Gardens Illustrated

From the Publisher

08/01/2022

In this non-gardening garden book, Irish author Reynolds (The Garden Awakening) advocates for returning cultivated spaces to nature. She wants people to become guardians rather than gardeners in her global movement to restore habitat to what it once was and should still be. She launched ARK, which stands for acts of restorative kindness, and it is a loose, international organization that preaches the gospel of restoring the Earth one small patch at a time. Evans's gloriously fanciful illustrations are a major part of the text, serving to inspire all to "rewild" their manicured plots, no matter the size. Removing non-native plants, eliminating all chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and making space and providing water for the creatures that used to abound is merely the start. While this seems most appropriate for rural spaces rather than urban or suburban gardens, there are suggestions for plots as small as window boxes. The persuasive text is followed by an appendix that gives step-by-step plans, extensive references, and a bibliography. VERDICT This may not be the handbook that many gardeners crave, but it is inspirational for all.—Danise Hoover

Library Journal