Inside the Territorial Garden
The need that we have to give more space to other living species is essential for our simple survival.
The Cromarty Firth as an Organism of flux By Alexis Perrocheau
Introduction What is a territorial garden? This question only makes sense if we understand the need to reconsider our relationship with other species, other elements, non-humans. The Anthropocene is the result of the expansion of mankind in numbers but also of the exploitation of the Earth’s resources per human in the last two centuries. Indeed, our atmospheric and geological impact as a species is considerable. (Paul J. Crutzen; 2006) The Planetary limits define not what Earth and Life (in general) can withstand, but what technologically complex cultures like ours, and many life forms that participate in the modern biosphere can manage without collapsing or becoming extinct. (H. Meadows, L. Meadows, Randers, W. Behrens III; 1972). For years, scientists have been warning our societies about the negative consequences of our actions, and philosophers have been trying to understand how we can change our habits and live in harmony with our environment. Bruno Latour defines the limits of this complex environment “In the singular, the term Critical Zones designates the Thin Layer in wich life has radically modified the earth’s atmosphere and geology – as opposed either to the space beyond or to the deep geology below“ (Bruno Latour, 2018) With this simple sentence, he manages to demonstrate all the diversity, the power but also the fragility (1) of this thin layer blocked between two empty zones; two death zones.
1) Life everywhere! Cromarty Firth, Scotland; Personal Pictures; 18.10.2020
“The Anthropocene throws us a particular challenge to acknowledge those ecological connections that sustain our existence. We live within networks, webs, and relationships with non-human (or more-than-human) others, including plants, animals, rivers and soils. “(Jessica K. Weir; 2015) Jessica K. Weir formulates this paradigm shift linked to this need for recognition for the living world. But how is this necessary change can be spatially interpreted?
1- The garden as a meeting place between Humans and Nature Gardens through history have had different shapes and different functions according to the beliefs and cultures of societies; but all tried to describe a space where abundance and beauty could have been possible.
Gardens origins and the fertility myths “We find in almost all civilizations, that (the original myth) of the separation of earth and sky. And it is a most essential bond, because the garden is born precisely from this sharing. It reveals the deep foundations of the soil by its rocks, its wells, its springs, and at the same
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