Plant Lives Matter

Hello neighbors,

This is Steven, your natural local landscaper with Plant Lives Matter LLC Landscaping and More.

I’m just checking in with a report after an introduction last month. Life from a perspective of a Landscaper. Most of us are landscapers’ whether we want to claim this or not. It’s in our nature to take care of the planet in a way that is creative, productive, interactive or engaging.

As a species, we have been engaging with our landscapes throughout time and space. It used to be required as a way of surviving, but being raised indoors and on television, computer, and phone screens have allowed my peers to not entertain this idea of being a natural landscaper. I suspect most people reading this may be elders. I am considered a millennial by age group.

After spending time volunteering for the non-profit I mentioned in my last article, I gained this perspective firsthand. I was raised on technology, indoors during most hours of the day at school, indoors at home watching T.V. and playing video games. But not engaging in the landscape the way perhaps an Amish kid would in their community. Having ex-Amish friends who dropped out of the community in Missouri, I learned their lifestyle at a young age would include many tasks with their farmland, learning to break horses by the age of six, and learning skills required for community contribution.

This is how I suspect perhaps most people lived 100 years ago before the big industrial revolution progress in technology. This change in childhood is not bad, I am pointing at the idea that we are naturally landscapers and our interaction with the planet, environment, and landscape has minimized our relationship with this natural, once-required skill. As we get older nowadays, we continue to stay in our indoor created environments like cars and buildings going on with life as if our little bubbles are somehow separate from our environments. People are convinced we are separate from our environments.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Billions of organisms all interact 24/7 every day to produce and balance our resources and requirements to sustain our livelihoods, daily lifestyles, and bodily functions. We are all products of our environments. You can not be healthy in an unhealthy environment. Plant Lives Matter. Our interactions with our landscapes are just as meaningful as our interactions with our neighbors, families, and church communities.

Our current technological-based lives now have allowed us to forget this importance! Landscaping is not just a job, hobby, or somebody’s way of making money. Landscaping is a part of our lives and our daily interaction with it is not as required due to our advancements in technology. Because of this, our relationship with the planet is minimum and some people are even afraid to even go outside anymore.

On top of this our impact on our systems from food to water, and energy greatly affect our environments in unhealthy ways. You can’t be healthy in an unhealthy environment. If we largely damage our environments, we are damaging ourselves and our children get the result handed off to them as they inherit this and pass it on to their children and so on.

One example of this unhealthy impact is the thousands of acres cleared for development. With this, there is huge habitat loss of millions of organisms, plants, and animals leading to less natural environments to sustain life. The future of this example leads to desert. In a desert, there are minimal resources for life. There is a global movement now talking about soil aiming to reach 3.5 billion people on the planet to start talking about soil now by July of 2022.

Studies are showing over 50% of the soil on the planet is turning into desert or poor in nutrients. This is also a major concern for our future generations. Everybody is talking about climate change, pollution, and politics, but nothing about soil. Soil is the very foundation that sustains us all! Your body, my body, everybody is technically a soil body. We are not separate from our environment! Soil is found in every landscape, and is often missed in our daily lives, but never the less it is there, and so are we. More on the soil next time.

For now, visit consciousplanet.org to find out more.

If we are largely impacting our environment in unhealthy ways, we and our children feel separate from our environment, what will this result in for future generations ahead? Long-term planning to include healthy policies in our landscapes and farms as we grow and develop economically is a must and from the perspective of a fellow landscaper, the way we landscape at large could be healthier!

Thank You for reading!

Steven Turner

Plant Lives Matter LLC

A Natural Way to Landscape

More on soil, visit: consciousplanet.org

Plant Lives Matter