Our Relationship With Nature in Flux

By: Scot Pipkin, Director of Education

I was born just after the summer solstice, during a so-called cusp. I’ve been told that dictates a lot about my personality. While that may be true, I believe a greater influence on my personality is the fact that I grew up during a different kind of cusp. As a child of the early 1980s, I was raised during a period when kids’ relationship to the natural world changed remarkably. During my earliest years, there was no computer in our house. Aside from watching some television, most of my free time was spent playing outside. When my family acquired a personal computer, it was used by adults for work.

As I got older and began to visit friends’ houses to play, video games emerged as a central activity. Although I enjoyed the games, I found myself being more excited about going outside together. Reluctantly, my friends would agree, but that outdoor time typically didn’t last long. After a few minutes, we’d retreat back inside where I would end up watching a screen over someone’s shoulder.

I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I think I sensed a social and cultural shift. I felt it in myself, too. Video games can be very fun and addictive, just as the vast amount of information and media on the internet can (and does) consume inordinate amounts of time. As years passed, I understood that the dissonance I felt between my appreciation for technology and my urge to be in natural settings was partly the result of the era in which I grew up.

Disconnection

Intrinsically, screens and digital media are not necessarily a problem. However, our interaction with digital devices is inversely correlated with time spent outdoors and our connection to the natural world. It’s been documented that children spend over seven hours looking at screens each day. For many professional adults, that number is even higher. Over the last several years, researchers have used a variety of metrics — ranging from the disappearance of wildlife in urban areas to a decrease in time spent outdoors to the fact that children can name more Pokémon varieties than local wildlife species — to measure disconnection from nature (Kesebir and Kesebir, 2017). In our work at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, we are working to counteract people’s “plant blindness,” which is a subset of the term, inattention nature blindness (Zylstra et al, 2014). By myriad metrics, people are losing touch with the earth and its processes, which nourish us.

Meanwhile, we are experiencing our planet’s sixth mass extinction event. Species are disappearing from our planet at the fastest rate in 65 million years. Temperatures are rising at an alarming rate, and every year we seem to be setting heat records. In California and throughout the West, this puts additional stress on a system where precipitation is completely random and drought is typical (Woodhouse, et al, 2010; Williams, et al, 2021). Drier plants burn more easily, and we are seeing massive and usually human-caused fires spread across huge swaths of the landscape. These fires threaten homes and lead to uncertain futures for wildlands trying to recover amidst invasive species and fragmented ecology.

While all of this may be true and the world appears to be on the brink of catastrophe, let’s focus on a positive path forward. Working at the Garden, I have surrounded myself with solutions-oriented people. That’s one of the reasons I’m drawn to this place. Our "raison d'etre," or reason for existence, is to instigate change for California’s native plants and habitats, not rue their loss or bemoan disconnection from the natural world. Instead, we rejoice in the diversity, beauty, and resilience of California’s native plants and habitats. Through one’s garden itself, we demonstrate the reciprocal relationships humans can cultivate with the planet. By tending the earth, particularly with native plants, people simultaneously address their disconnection with natural processes and the twin threats of biodiversity loss and climate change.

Enter: The Backcountry

In this spirit, the Garden has embarked on an ambitious project to foster love and appreciation for California’s native plants and habitats and cultivate the next generation of environmental stewards. We call this project the Backcountry and believe that it will provide a wealth of opportunities for youth, families, and other visitors to make profound, authentic connections with the natural world. Through thoughtful design, a unique plant palette, and careful balance between free exploration and engaging interactions, the Backcountry is a children’s garden like no other.

Gaia Tree Casita (Photo: Central Coast Green Business Council)

The root activity driving the entire Backcountry design is child-directed play. By engaging young people’s curiosity and providing agency in their experience, we intend to promote more than connection with the natural world. By supporting self-directed exploration and play, the Backcountry could help visitors with decision-making, independence, and self-confidence in a space that is non-deterministic or judgmental (Aminpour, Bishop, and Corkery, 2020). In the parlance of video games, the goal is to promote as many “side quests” as possible, with visitors participating in activities because they are curious, not because there is a larger goal to achieve. The difference is that the video game environment is limited by the parameters of binary code. In the Backcountry, the opportunities for exploration are almost limitless.

Among the most significant asset of the Backcountry is its sheer size. At 4.5 acres (1.8 hectares), the Backcountry provides a world unto itself. This allowed the design team ample opportunity to infuse a sense of place into the design. To achieve this, the boundaries of the Backcountry were carefully planned to reinforce a sense of arrival and threshold into something special.

A Backcountry Tour

Most visitors will enter the Backcountry via Campbell Bridge, on the north end of the project site. On the west side of the bridge, a turn to the south (left) will take a visitor into the Backcountry by way of a sycamore (Plantanus racemosa) grove. In the same way that the Garden’s Redwood Section creates a stunning sense of place through a mass planting of trees, the intention is to immediately engage the imagination with color, texture, and a three-dimensional experience. Planted berms flowing through the site provide visual interest and beckon running, hiding, and changing perspectives on the ground plane. It might be tempting to think this is the extent of the Backcountry, but two trails — one wide and smooth enough for two strollers to pass, the other narrow and leading to parts unknown — demand reconnaissance.

Either way, the trails converge eventually, as they do throughout the Backcountry, giving parties the chance to split up, have individual adventures, and reconvene down the trail to swap stories and doubleback to share discoveries. As the traveler moves south, they will pass through a series of Retention Basins, designed to capture water runoff from Tunnel Road, reduce erosion, filter water, and provide opportunities to rock hop and scramble.

Down the trail, visitors encounter the Fallen Forest, a feature that resembles a hillside of windfallen tree trunks hugging a steep hillside. Again, choice can be exercised here, giving visitors the option to ascend, leading to another series of narrow trails that contour the hillside, climb a little way up and return, or continue along the main trail. Moreover, the interstices of the tree trunks provide opportunities to hide and crawl.

Continuing on, the Backcountry features a Salamander Snag, where cover boards or sections of dead wood are placed principally for the purpose of flipping and looking underneath. It’s easy to overlook the detritivores, decomposers, and hunters of the soil, but exploring this microscopic world reminds us how much life is always underfoot. Adjacent to the Salamander Snag is the preexisting Centennial Maze, whose entrance has been realigned to increase a sense of suspense and discovery.

Be a Bee Casita (Photo: Andrea Russell)

In awe of the Hawk's Nest Casita (Photos: Andrea Russell)

The Backcountry (Photos: Andrea Russell)

The Backcountry (Photos: Andrea Russell)

Throughout the Backcountry, there are opportunities to sit and enjoy a quiet, still moment on a bench, rock, or log. At the heart of the Backcountry, a particularly large area for lounging named Base Camp has been installed. The intent is to create a central location that is close enough to let individuals separate and explore without getting too far from the rest of their party, while also allowing for independent exploration and safe boundary-pushing.

Base Camp features seating spaces, a shady canvas tent, and a composting toilet. This area provides a gathering space for the occasional program and also houses the Ranger Kiosk. One of the most ambitious aspects of the Backcountry project is that the funding model has ensured an endowment to support two staff (rangers) to help maintain and supervise the Backcountry. This innovative and forward-thinking feature of the project ensures that the space is consistently cared for and provides an opportunity for public engagement through earth art, wildcrafting with the abundant, useful plants that are cultivated throughout the Backcountry, and enthusiastic support for inquiry and exploration.

Moving upslope from Base Camp, above the bishop pines (Pinus muricata) that are holdovers from when this area was the Island Section of the Garden, the intrepid explorer will find the Raptor’s Perch, a site with a commanding view of the Backcountry and more than a couple of surprises to discover. Down below, an entirely new area called Quail Grove has been cleared just above the creek. It highlights the native topography of an alluvial bench, with the attendant boulders, brambles, and hummocks. As in the true backcountry of California, little more than access to natural spaces can open worlds of discovery.

At the southern terminus of the Backcountry, visitors will find an entry/exit featuring several living structures, placed as reminders that humans are in constant interaction with the natural world. For those leaving the Backcountry, these archways and the dome of sycamores will hopefully give pause to consider how they will interact with the world around them moving forward.

Backcountry Casitas

Scattered throughout the Backcountry, the Garden has invited designers from near and far to provide additional perspectives on discovery in nature through the creation of unique dwellings. These five Backcountry Casitas infuse a built element to the project and provide opportunities for continual reinterpretation of the Backcountry.

First among the Casitas is Trolling Trees, a design developed by students and faculty from Colorado State University. This sculptural design evokes the mythical troll creatures often associated with forests and woodlands. Featuring gabion baskets (mesh forms filled with cobbles) typically used in erosion control, this Casita is sited at the Retention Basin area of the Backcountry.

Just east of Base Camp, above the creek, the Central Coast Green Building Council partnered with local designer Natasha Elliott of Sweet Smiling Landscapes to create the Gaia Tree, which evokes the Tree of Life featured across many cultures. In addition to providing a multilevel experience with interior and exterior spaces to explore, the Gaia Tree is constructed using hempcrete. This building material utilizes hemp hurd (a hemp-plant by-product) combined with lime and water.

In the Raptor’s Perch area, the Backcountry design team, Brightview, designed a Casita called the Perch, which simulates the preferred nesting site of the redshouldered hawk, one of the resident birds of the Backcountry area. Although they are in the genus of soaring hawks, red-shouldered hawks utilize a slightly different method of hunting. They swoop down on their prey, small mammals, from perches on high, as opposed to soaring and dropping from high elevations in the sky.

Far below the Raptor’s Perch, near Mission Creek, visitors encounter the Hawk’s Nest, designed by Composer Cody Westheimer. This nest-like structure, featuring a sculptural red-tailed hawk, provides a space for reflection and respite. Featuring comfortable benches and a free library, the Hawk’s Nest also provides opportunity for building with loose parts within the footprint of the Casita.

At the southern-most end of the Backcountry at the terminus of the Quail Grove is Be a Bee, the second Casita designed and installed by students and faculty at Colorado State University. This structure asks visitors to pretend they have shrunk to the size of a native bee, one of 1,600 species found throughout California. Many of these bees nest in horizontal cavities, which is the premise for Be a Bee Casita. Pass through a nest cavity to get to the other side.

Throughout the lifespan of the Backcountry, the Garden will put out new calls for designers to create unique, innovative domicile designs for temporary installation.

A Long-term Investment

Individually, each of the elements of the Backcountry is a prime opportunity for visitors to disengage from the digital realm and experience authentic interactions with the natural world. We are pretty confident that kids will not be the only ones who are impacted by this project and predict that adults will find themselves remembering the spark of pure joy and awe at being in nature that everyone’s experienced at some point. After a few visits to the Backcountry at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, folks may even feel compelled to get out into California’s backcountry, whether in Los Padres National Forest, the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, or elsewhere.

Over the years, the Backcountry will change. Plants will mature, canopy will develop, and Casitas will be replaced. As the site evolves, we anticipate that young people who encounter the Backcountry in their early years will find more opportunities to engage with the space and with the Garden. Our hope is to build the next generation of plant lovers, conservation voters, and champions for California’s native plants right here in Santa Barbara. See you on the trail! O

Acknowledgements: Aminpour, F., Bishop, K., & Corkery, L. (2020). The hidden value of inbetween spaces for children’s self-directed play within outdoor school environments. Landscape and urban planning, 194, 103683.

Kesebir, S., & Kesebir, P. (2017). A growing disconnection from nature is evident in cultural products. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(2), 258-269.

Gurholt, K. P., & Sanderud, J. R. (2016). Curious play: Children’s exploration of nature. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 16(4), 318-329.

Williams, A. P., Anchukaitis, K. J., Woodhouse, C. A., Meko, D. M., Cook, B. I., Bolles, K., & Cook, E. R. (2021). Tree rings and observations suggest no stable cycles in Sierra Nevada cool-season precipitation. Water Resources Research, 57(3), e2020WR028599.

Woodhouse, C. A., Meko, D. M., MacDonald, G. M., Stahle, D. W., & Cook, E. R. (2010). A 1,200-year perspective of 21st century drought in southwestern North America. Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences, 107(50), 21283-21288.

Zylstra, M. J., Knight, A. T., Esler, K. J., & Le Grange, L. L. (2014). Connectedness as a core conservation concern: An interdisciplinary review of theory and a call for practice. Springer Science Reviews, 2(1), 119-143.