How to become guardians: Why healing the land can heal our hearts

Please note: We run our audio podcast episodes through a transcription software platform that offers 90% accuracy. So you may find some words are out of place and a few sentences don’t make complete sense. If you do see something utterly ridiculous we’d love you to let us know so we can correct it. Please email any howlers with the time stamp to team@bemythical.com.

Episode Transcript:

Lian Brook-Tyler  01:38

Hello my beautiful people a huge warm welcome back to the show. If you're new here or ready to go deeper on your soul path, we've just filled all the places in our most recent crucible wild sovereign, and we haven't yet opened the doors to our upcoming crucibles wild soul or mythical that will be coming soon. So in the meantime, we have a gift for you. A powerful wild wander guide to uncovering your hearts deepest longings. It's based on ancient ways alchemize for modern days, helping you to thrive in this crazy modern world without having to move to a planet that is not so crazy as ours. To take this step on your soul path, do hop on over to waking the wild dot com/wolfpack now, and you'll get your mitts on it right away and see all the other ways you can go deeper with us. And register your interest for upcoming crucibles. And now on to this week's show its with Mary Reynolds. Mary is an accomplished landscape designer who gained international recognition after deputing at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2002. Her inspiring story was featured in the 2016 film dare to be wild, which I've watched along with my family and can thoroughly recommend. In addition to being a best selling author and occasional television presenter, she also founded "we are the ark", a global movement aimed at promoting practical solutions for preserving the environment. In this conversation, Mary and I explored the arcing movement, why she sees it's so necessary. What can get in the way of us going from gardeners to guardians, the small changes we can all make to be part of healing the land, and how ultimately, it's about healing ourselves. Let's dive in. Hello, Mary, welcome to the show.

Mary Reynolds  03:34

Hi, Lian. Nice to Nice to be here. Thanks for asking me.

Lian Brook-Tyler  03:38

Oh, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. As I was telling you this definitely. I mean, there's always a personal interest in any of the conversations I have. But there's like a particularly kind of burning passion kind of level of interest I've got in the work that you're doing. So yeah, this is a real treat for me. So I know quite a bit about your your background, your story, having watched your film, which I'd really recommend to listeners to go watch after this. But I would love for listeners to hear how you've ended up doing the work, which is, you know, quite unusual, really how you ended up doing what you're doing now.

Mary Reynolds  04:18

Sure, well, it's it's quite a long and winding story, but I can try and give you a brief synopsis of who I am. I grew up on a small farm in the south east of Ireland and I suppose I had a very strong connection with nature when I was young. I had an experience in a field which kind of formed the basis of my understanding of the sort of understanding of the life that exists and consciousness that exists in everything. And I kind of forgot about all that when I was a bit older, obviously going to parties and all that sort of thing when you're a teenager, and I didn't really know what I was up to in life, and then my mom insisted I went to college, because it was kind of part of what we had to do as kids. And, you know, it was kind of understood that that was part of our, our job. And it was very kind of her to put me in that position. I was the youngest of six kids. So at that point, she could have given up altogether, but she did. So she, though I didn't want, I didn't know what I wanted to do in college, but I, I fancied a guy doing landscape design in Dublin in UCD. And I thought to myself, Oh, there, so And hence, that was the reasoning behind me joining that career of choice and two weeks into the course, that was the end of that. I kept going with the course anyway. So anyway, so I finished the degree and I set up business and started designing gardens straightaway. And, you know, I did that for a few years, that was a really good designer, but I was gradually losing the will to live, because people, you know, change their minds, depending on what television program they had seen the night before. And, you know, I wasn't very good at bossing people around, or I hadn't really discovered who I truly was yet. So I just do what anyone asked me to do kind of thing, you know, was easily easily led as a designer, and I could design any kind of style as such. But then I kind of had a dream one night when I moved back to the countryside from the city. And the dream was basically it was it was me being a crow. And I was flying above the landscape. And it was an ancient landscape. And it was clothed that in the arts, choice of our own clothes, it was an ancient mixed, you know, ponds and lakes and rivers and streams, you know, little trickly streams, slivers of silver from way up up and meadows and grubby areas and ancient woodlands, I heard my name being called. And so I dived down through the air into these woods. And then as they came through the trees, I saw, you know, what I look like now. But I was painted blue, sitting on a log looking up at myself as a Crow, grinning. And it's kinda like, everything froze, and I froze, and then everything sort of, I got sucked back into this reality, and I woke up. But it was a very simple thing. But like, it was like a key turning in my head. And I realized that nature was the real deal. And gardens were just a poor version of her. And so I set about trying to understand how can I, how can I explain that to people? And clients wouldn't let me do it, because I wasn't very good at bossing them around. And so I thought the best thing to do would be to go to the Chelsea Flower Show, which is the only kind of flower show I'd heard about at the time in London. And so I did, I went there. And that was a great story in itself. And then, and that's the one that got made into that movie, "There to be Wild" that you've referred to. And then that kind of set me off on a, on a curve of, of working all over the world, you know, as a designer, and living the dream, you know.

Lian Brook-Tyler  08:49

But when you were designing gardens, then like, after the Chelsea Flower Show, was there, was there more of a kind of honoring the wild within the designs? Or did it still feel that you weren't? Did you still feel that you weren't fully able to honor that?

Mary Reynolds 09:12

Yeah, well, I had to when I was designing gardens that were wild, you know, as in as in they were full of native plants. And and they were kind of interwoven with stories and intention. However, when I decided to write a book of the real story of the film like was, which was much more interesting. And then I got in, I got bored of doing that, when the movie was coming out, and I started writing about my work. And I realized that even though I was designing gardens, within the shapes and patterns of nature, and they were in harmony with the flow of energy, you know, the universal energy which flows through everything wasn't blocked, because we I was using shapes and patterns from nature, so everything flowed. But the land itself didn't want to stay with I had directed that it had its own intentions, and it knew what it wanted to become and I hadnt a clue. And I kept maintaining it and forcing it back into a box, you know. And so I wrote my first book about, okay, how do you actually work with Land, old ways of magic and mystery and, you know, working with intention, and, you know, a gentle kind of approach to how we design our landscapes and feed ourselves at the same time. So, that that was that. And then one morning, I was sitting at my desk and about 2019, I think it was. And it No, it was 2018 in the winter of 2018. And I was looking down over my lawn, and a fox ran past and two hairs chasing the fox, which was kind of, you know, wrong. It grasp my attention. And then I thought, I'd keep watching to see if they reemerge. And then I saw a little hedgehog scuttling along the hedge in the same direction, and I thought, Gosh, just like Noah's Ark. And so I went outside and walked in the direction they were coming from. And then he ended my lane. There was this, across the road of just like a one car country road, there was this thicket of a field on the other side, which was like, you know, Snow White's impenetrable wall of thorns, like, no, nothing could get in. And it was just, it was about an acre, and it was full of life, you know, full of native plants and trees and emerging healing ecosystem. And somebody had got planning permission to build a house at the top of the land, and they'd gone in with a digger to clear the whole thing out to make a garden without any thought for the creatures to call it home. And I stood there, absolutely horrified and realized I'd done this myself so many times, and that I had everything upside down. Do you know, and so, I thought where these wild creatures supposed to go, you know, they can't go out into our agricultural landscapes because they're poisoned. And the habitats are being reefed out at the rate of knots, because farmers are not supported to do anything else really. And they can't go into our gardens because they're filled with non native plants, which are not part of the local foodweb. And they're very, kind of tidy and tidy spaces don't really allow life to exist, and animals. So it was a more chemicals, more chemical so many. And, and then, if taken could, they can only exist in these tiny wild places, which we don't value and we just see as opportunities to turn into something else. And so I realized that as I researched it, that nature has collapsed already in Ireland and England and Scotland and Wales and many parts of the world nature has already collapsed ecosystems, really were just clinging on their thinking on and you know, we've lost 70% of the wildlife on this planet since 1970. And that's No, that's no coincidence that that's when the aptly named Green Revolution came in, in agriculture, the chemical, the chemical model for industrial farming and forestry and fishing, which is killing everything on the planet really. And so I kind of went inside and I decided I have to do something to change this. So I started a movement called We Are The Ark "Acts of Restorative Kindness" to the earth in case anybody thought it wasn't like some kind of a religious organization. It's not it's, it's, it's a movement, and it has gone all over the world. And people are simply asked if they can to give as much of their land as they can back to nature and to restore her native plant communities as much as they can. And put up a sign saying this is an "ark" so that your neighbors don't helpfully come around and spray a tree or something like that, which happens a lot. And, and to basically to shift the consciousness and create a patchwork quilt of hope for our for wildlife which we are hopelessly and completely dependent upon their existence in abundance for our continued existence on this planet, you know,

Lian Brook-Tyler  15:00

Oh, wow. I feel I feel so moved by everything you've just shared. I'm just taking a moment. When I first came across you and your work, reading, I think it was actually the introduction to your book had been kind of put as an interview in Watkins magazine. And as soon as I began reading this, I was like, Oh, my goodness, this is for those of us that have a deep connection with the land. I'll speak for myself, I was kind of like, this is so interesting. It's like, I've seen so much of this. But there's something in the way that you're talking about this, that it kind of landed me in this, like, Oh, my goodness, this is so so what's needed and so important, and something that somehow we're not talking about, and it kind of like what you've just hearing you say it again. Now, it always lands me, it's like quite shocking, that we've been so conditioned not to see this, like what we're creating with our gardens. It's quite mind blowing, again, for even those of us that have a deep connection with, with the land with the wild how, and it for me personally, like we've consciously left quite large areas of our garden wild, real intention, and not used any chemicals. But even then I was like, see that there was, how can I put this? I don't think I actually really realized how important it was. And I think I was there was part of me that always was still looking at that land with a bit of an eye of like, perhaps it's a bit of a shame that we've left it that way. And even though it was intentional, it's like strange how the conditioning still comes back in wherever now and again, I've looked at it, maybe maybe we shouldn't be leaving it like that. And it was, when I read that interview, I was just like, Oh, my goodness, like, Isn't it strange that I've been having those thoughts, when like, this is all doing a version of this is the way forward and it makes a difference. I think that's what I really saw in, in your book and your film, it's like, it does actually make a difference. Everyone, like you know how much land they can allow to give back to the wild, it makes a difference. And there was, which I'd like to get into kind of the practicalities because there were things that I took from, I've got your recent book, and they were really practical advice in there. I was like, Ah, I can do that to make this even more helpful to nature. And I'd like to get into but I think I'd like to do is start with, because of the work that we do at Waking the Wild. A lot of it is about ultimately, healing and change, which, you know, ultimately sort of starts with ourselves and then is kind of expressed out there in you know, our lives, including in our gardens and our families and communities. And one of the things that often can really get in the way is when something creates a lot of shame, you know, when we feel this sense of like, I don't even want to look there because it just feels so too. So shaming. And so I wondered your thoughts on that when, when you're speaking about the work you do. Whether you notice, like people almost like can't bear to be in the conversation because of their own like, oh, like I feel so bad about the fact that, you know, my garden is the way it is and actually want to keep it the way it is. So I'd like to know before we even go before we even have the conversation, I would love to know your thoughts in terms of like what you've seen, helps people start to open to this way of thinking and looking at their, their the land that they're lucky enough to be custodians of. Do you notice that resistance coming up in terms of people most like, oh, I don't even want to look at this whole idea of giving back the land. Like what do you notice about that comes up for people and then conversely, what have you noticed, like opens people up to starting to think about their gardens differently?

Mary Reynolds  19:32

Yeah, there's a huge amount of shame involved. Which is why we say to everyone make a sign and we're not selling anything. We is me like I say we, but I'm not selling anything. So you know. Find a piece of old wood or something that you can make a sign on and put it up in your garden to explain that it's now an ark and that To remove that shame, because it lets people know that you're doing something important, and immediately removes it. Now, the thing is that it doesn't have to be shameful, like, it can be beautiful, it's just that it's just the intention is different. So, like, you know, you still create paths and create areas for yourself, you just don't take any more than you need, you know, and everything can become habitat. And so, your edgings, your, you know, what you do with the ground, you don't drag stone from halfway across the world, to pave your Ark, you know, you kind of try and work locally and work at the local seed bank and with local genetic population of plants, and but it's a different, it's different. It's not about you know, people can be a little bit ashamed, especially in places like, you know, the states where you're not allowed to do anything different. Especially if you have a homeowner's association, people are very restricted, you know. But even in all those organizations, there are people who are open to change, you know, so it's really about pushing for change. And the thing that seems to really get people on board is, if you care about the planet, it's a stupid question. Like, if you care about the planet, if you really want to be part of a movement, that is part of the solution to what we're doing what we've done, then you've got to start with your own patch of it, or else, you're just talking rubbish. You know, and I think people get that, you know, start with your own patch of this planet, and, and heal that bit, then you can start moving out from there. And that seems to be we get that, like, they get that they suddenly realize that oh, yeah, this is a bit of this whole earth that I'm trying to protect, the environmental movement is extremely conducive to anxiety. Because, you know, changing your lightbulbs are, you know, going along with the whole recycling more and more plastic, which really was just invented, to allow them to keep making this stuff, really, you know, the, we really need to do something which gives us heart because people have lost heart. And that's the thing about building an Ark. You know, no matter how small your land use, what happens is that you you restore hope in your own heart, because how quickly nature recovers, and how desperate the creatures are, and they'll turn up overnight in your land, even before anything really has happened. Because it's almost like the land knows you've given it back, there's a sigh of relief. And suddenly, all these creatures turn up. It's just amazing. Like, it is quite weird. The way they just turn up. Like if you bring a drone up above my land, like here, surrounded by industrial agriculture, and, you know, commercial woodland on one side. And, you know, there's nothing living in those places. And the amount of life here is phenomenal. You know, I have I've everything from lizards to buzzards to badgers and foxes and dragonflies and frogs. You know, everything is just amazing. Like we're missing like the wolves and lynxes and the bears. And, you know, I don't have deer here. But so we have to step in and become those creatures and carry out the services that the land is missing because of their absence. And that's why arking is not like rewilding rewilding needs 1500 acres or more, you know, to have a proper system in place where it restored ecosystem with all the different creatures involved, you know, but arking, as we call it is can be done in a window sill, you know, our bathroom or tiny garden and you can do whatever you can and what happens is you restore a connection with nature because you're actually looking after her and so every spider or worm or birds that comes to share your patch of the planet becomes part of your family and your heart opens up to include them and so you become incredibly protective of them. And then when you leave your Ark you just see all the lost opportunities everywhere. All your neighbours pristine gardens, that cost an absolute fortune for some ridiculous reason because we're all chasing some experience of nature. So we spend more and more money on our landscapes to try and create it when actually is you need to spend nothing. You need to change your shift your intention into one of guardian instead of gardener, and then then it all, you actually restore a connection and you feel better, and that hole in your heart starts to fill in, you know, because we've caught our connection with the earth beneath our feet, that's, we're walking on plastic shoes where, you know, Rubber soled shoes where, you know, we never touch the Earth, we never, we were spaced out, like, you know, so it's very simple to fix that. grow your own food and the other. So that's the other part of Arking is growing your own food, if you can, or supporting local, regenerative organic growers, because everything has to become local, like the solutions are local, the destruction is local. And the solutions can be local too, you know,

Lian Brook-Tyler  25:44

yeah, I love this so much, because I think there is a real, practical, accessible element to this idea of arking. But I really feel what you're talking about, and having, you know, absolute experiences personally, that it's, it's actually what it allows us to reclaim as humans, that that birthright of that just deep interconnection with everything around us. It's, that's part of it, there's a kind of unseen, but probably, you know, the most precious benefit of all, it starts to reconnect us back to our hearts. And it's such a genius idea. And I love that at some point in the book, you spoke of it like a almost like, I think you use the language of almost like a patchwork you know, of arks and, you know, ultimate, they start to connect up, they start to even however small they are, as they grow, they do create this sense of like islands of places that it is safer for nature to come back to. And I can you know, that feels doable to me, that that does feel like something that we can actually create between us. Yeah,

Mary Reynolds  26:57

I agree. That is that is the thing, because otherwise, it's all overwhelming. What, like it's overwhelming. But if each of us that has any land under our care, gives it back and supports it to become its true nature, then there is hope. I mean, the interconnectivity is really important, you know, the, you know, the islandisation of land and habitats is a major problem. I mean, you can drive, I don't know, 200 kilometers in Ireland, between Dublin and, you know, I don't know, to say Waterbridge. And there's, there's two different counties and the hallway along the motorway, there is a huge concrete bollard, which divides, the two counties in half, that like Kerala and Waterford are completely separate, and wildlife cannot get across the road for that whole stretch. And that's typical of our lack of understanding of our place and nature, which is actually to become the spider is at the center of this web, and reweave the whole thing back together. And this, this absolute dominion over nature that we have extended over a millennia has, you know, it was understandable maybe at the beginning, but at this point, now, when when we're at the edge of a cliff, and we're all being pushed over it, and so we can't stop the corporate powers, or the political puppets of those corporations, we can't stop them, we can only do what we can do. And if enough of us shift, and take back our power and create really strong communities and, you know, restore health to every bit of this land, we can, I'm pretty sure it'll shift the consciousness in our favor. Like, you know, there's, there's, I read this between three, there's estimates of version 3.14, which is pi and 20% of the population needs to shift their understanding before the whole consciousness shifts instantly. And so that's not too bad. Like, we can probably do that, you know. And it's funny, because when you come over to our side of the fence, right, you look back and you wonder What in God's name, was that all about? Gardens? Well, it was like, now I look at them. And I just think, Gosh, that's just shocking, like, but it's only shocking because I'm over here. Like, I was part of that world for so long. And you know, I was trying so hard to create beauty. It was to what the hell does that matter? Like, you know, I mean, nature is true. Nature's true self is beautiful, true beauty. And not some version of it that we all have which is all different. Everyone's version of beauty is different. But, you know, I mean, women are tired of having to fit into a box, that same box that we're putting land into, you know, like the embodied like land is the Earth is the embodiment of the feminine, and we only value land. And women, if they're pretty or productive. We don't allow the land to develop into a mature state, like women are not allowed to mature, you know, we have to, we have to hold ourselves, or try and hold ourselves in a particular state in order to be considered valuable. In our own land as the same we, we punish it, we maintain it, we, you know, we keep going in and cutting it back to make sure it doesn't change, you know, stays the same. So that when the neighbors call around, you know, looks pretty, or whatever version of what we're doing, like just the amount of money spent on maintaining land and the amount of chemicals sprayed upon the earth, just keep it the way we think it should be, like, if we just set it free, such a big, big ask for people to think about, but if, if they start to understand the collapse of nature, and how shifting baseline syndrome has the man just not not really understanding what's going on, you know, and that's that concept that with every passing generation, there is, there is less and less of an understanding of what nature looks like, really, you know, how abundant she used to be, like, you know, I mean, I always use this idea of how my dad used to tell me stories of how the sun used to get blocked out by swarms of migrating butterflies, you know, and the flocks of migrating birds, or how there are waves in the ocean, if you were swimming in them, they'd be fish hopping all around you like, you know, the rivers were hopping with life. And, you know, the sound of birdsong was deafening. And if you drove like your car at night time, you know, the windscreen will be covered in dead bugs at the end of it but you know, insects at the end of it, and and now you'd like barely see any.

Lian Brook-Tyler  32:30

 Yes, I remember seeing that in your book. And I was like, Oh, my goodness, like in my lifetime, that's changed. And I hadn't noticed it changed. It was when I when I read that I'm like, Oh, my goodness, yes. I mean, it was quite upsetting seeing so many insects killed on the windscreen, but it was kind of more upsetting realizing that they weren't there to even be killed. It was weird way of putting it.

Mary Reynolds  32:56

I mean, insects, insects, and native plant communities are the foundation stone of all life on Earth. And we've lost 80% of the insects 80%

Lian Brook-Tyler  33:07

You know, and goodness,

Mary Reynolds  33:09

The understanding is when they go, we have about four months to live, all of us make that dish. So I mean, surely this is the most important work of all of our generation. And, and, and all of those generations that exist right now. You know, there is no more important issue than having a livable planet, because none of the other issues will matter. If we don't have a life, you know, yeah, what else? What else is there to be doing? Like, I know, everybody has stuff to be dealing with, and everybody has serious issues, and people have kids that need a lot of care. You know, they might not have good health or any of that stuff. But we still have them, you know, we have we have this place to be here and to exist in and we won't if we don't take this on, like, you know, and corporations aren't going to take this on, because they don't, I don't know what planet they think they're going to live on. Like, I wish they would all go and live on Mars and leave us alone. But, but they, you know, it's not going to work that easily. We really have to fight for every patch of this planet. It'll be quite hard.

Lian Brook-Tyler  34:29

it comes back as ever to ourselves, isn't it? What we can do? Yeah, but there is, I think for me is that it's is healing ourselves as much as it is healing the land, they just happen to go hand in hand. That's very much how I see it. So per listeners that are starting to have a sense of like, oh, okay, maybe this is something that's for me to do. How would you suggest people get started? I mean, I know for us this was, you know, when we moved in where we currently live 10 years ago, and the people before us, just I think they just, like covered everything with chemicals. In short, like, there was just no signs of any life that we found gallons and gallons of weed killer in the shed. So it was kind of just like obliterating all signs of any I mean, it wasn't even very, very many, you know, typical garden plants, it was just, you know, as as kept as low maintenance as possible. So the first thing we did was just not continue to use things like that. And like you said, like the how fast things recovered was incredible. Within months, it felt like there was just all this life back in the garden. And then I say, over the years, we've intentionally thought, Okay, well, we don't need that part, we'll let that part go wild. Which I'd like to get into kind of what I've seen over the years with that, but what would you say is kind of those like first stepping stones back to giving the land back that people can can begin with

Mary Reynolds  36:11

First of all, I do nothing, and I'd observe your land and get to know it a little bit, put up a sign, because you know, just to avoid the neighbors coming in and helping. And then I get to know it, I look at where the wet patches are, you know, see what plants are coming up. Like, we do mire the earth, right. So you know, the Earth is like a great big heart. And when we started looking at her in terms of ownership, instead of in terms of guardianship, the the heart shattered into millions of tiny pieces, you know, and it's, it's still breaking and its our job to take each of those pieces and meld it back together. But it's funny, it's like, I don't really understand why but each of those little patches of broken heart, they all have different types of damage, and different requirements of healing and different personalities and characters. And we are drawn to the same, we are drawn to places that require the same types of healing that we do ourselves. And like you said, that's that's how it works. And that was the understanding of all our ancestors as well. And the good thing about that is as you start to restore your land back to its true nature and its true health, your own health will come back into alignment and you will you will find support to be who you truly are as well. And it all happens on a kind of a magical isoteric level, but it does happen and the other thing is that people talk about how all the herbs you need for your own health to grow outside your back door as such and that's because they're the same herbs that the land is throwing up to heal herself in that place. So it's very interesting that you can start looking at what's coming up and start researching what what what it does for health and in humans as well and see if it has any relationship to what you need, you know, but I suppose it's about creating as many layers of ecosystem as possible. And that means some bare earth you know, to allow the the annual weed seeds to come out and mow an area which would have you know, been the grazed grazed by the large herbivores, you know, an ark meadow, which is allowing the wild herbs come out of the seed bank and come up. And then you'd have a scrubby area which is all thorns and shrubs, all native plants, you know, and they come up as well brambles and thorns and black lines depending on what part of the world you're in, of course, it's different. And then you've got your woodlands and your emergent woodlands and your mature woodlands and all the communities of plants so it's not about planting trees, people have this thing about plant trees, plant trees, plant trees. Number one, it's it's ecologically everything is locally adapted. So you know, it's really about supporting the land itself to restore itself it just if there isn't any seed bank left after so much damage. Yeah, you had to bring in maybe pocket forests that are allowed to spread or you know if you can find seeds of trees that are local and old, that sort of thing. But yeah, then within that you create as many different supports for life as you can like water. Like it's very hard for wildlife to find a good source of water these days. Because, you know, all our waters are polluted. And, you know, we we we've done so much damage, so, you know, like 50% of all the little ponds were filled in, in here in Ireland anyway, to make more land for agriculture. Sure, and probably a lot more than 50%, really, and 87% of all the wetlands were filled in. But you see, see them on on Google Maps, images, you see the little dark patches in the land. And if you've got clay soil, you, then you really know you have one. And if you dig it out, all the microbiome is still present for that pond to restore. And so I've done that here. And it's amazing what's come out, you know. And that's brilliant. But even if you've only got a ball of water sunken into the ground, filled with rainwater, and some rocks to allow creatures in and out, that's going to be good. You know, with some, you know, they're even stagnant water is important because it's gets filled with larvae. But if you can't do the stagnant water and you want to have a bigger pond, you know, make sure you put in some nice water plan stocks, you need some spirally, straw, that kind of thing. Yeah, so that's, that's it, really, it's very simple. We have a very simple breakdown on how to do all this work on the website, where the ark.org, you know, and the information is all there and it's free. And the book just backs it up and gives a lot more detail because people don't like reading websites, really. But that's it, it's very simple. So one of the things that I think really destroys the hope of the earth to come back to herself is this narrative we've been fed, which is that if you plant pollinator friendly plants in your garden, that you're helping, and that's a that's a garden industry supportive narrative. It's not a nature supportive narrative. And then that classic way of the old version of conservation were focused in on one particular species, didn't think about everything else that is kind of similar to this, but it's worse because yes, if you put like, you know, these non native, single, open flowered plants in your gardens, you will get a lot of insects because it gives them it gives them a lot of food. It's not a whole food, but it's a food. It's a bit like a fast food restaurant in your garden, you know, and the thing is, we call them fast food flowers now, because what happens is that because the insects ignore the native more insignificant plants, because they've been given this kind of really tasty food, those cells that the, the native plants have formed relationships with the insects over millennia. And then the plants are really good at protecting themselves to filled with chemicals, right? They don't want to be. So insects lay their eggs on plants, right. And those, those insects have focused all their attention to evolve to eat one or maybe two different species of plants, because they've learned to adapt to the chemicals in those plants. And if those plants aren't present, then those insects don't get to create a new generation of their own species. So the plant communities collapse, they start to retreat. And then the insects Yeah, they get a great feed. Brilliant, but they can't lay their eggs anywhere, because those plants aren't present. And so that's a major problem. Because those larvae are the food, the basis of the food web for almost all small mammals and birds. You know, like birds don't feed their young seeds. They feed them larvae and spiders, you know, and you know, hedgehogs, you know, foxes, even shrews, all these little creatures they spend, they spend all their attention focusing on eating larvae. So yeah, it's especially a bit of a problem because people feel like they don't really have to change because they're helping by planting those plants. And that's not helpful. You know,

Lian Brook-Tyler  44:08

That blew my mind. It really was when I was like, Oh, my goodness, it. It makes so much sense. Now, I've heard you say it, but it's something again, that we've been so trained out of seeing the truth of what we're doing with our gardens, you kind of really need someone to say like, like, No, this thing that you've been told helps, is actually just another form of hindrance. I think that's a really important one. When we're, we're almost out of time. One final thing I'd love for you to talk a little bit about because this has been certainly a journey for me personally is witnessing the land that we've given back to the wild, how it's kind of gone through these different phases where at times, it literally just look like come pletely all stinging nettles. And we're like, we can't just leave, you know, all of this to stinging nettles. But as we've kind of like been patient and just watched what's happening over time, all different other species have come back. And now it's kind of there's all sorts of things. They're like really surprised at how on earth did that land there. But it's really tough to say what it's been 10 years now for that to happen. And really like spending time watching and just allowing it to do its own thing. But it's certainly been times where it has just looked like this isn't really like, Can this actually be helpful, you know, just this huge area covered in stinging nettles. But I'd love to hear your like, what you've seen, and what's helpful for people to know about that, as that kind of, you know, the time needed and what typically will happen as that time goes by.

Mary Reynolds  45:48

It's not typical at all, it's different for every patch of the planet. So I can't tell you what's going to happen. I just saw that people need to step in and remove any non native plants that emerged particularly, especially the non native invasive plants and, and I often hear this narrative that the earth, the earth knows what she's doing by bringing those plants into a place. And I'm sorry, that's not the case. We've done too much damage. can't evolve fast enough for the changes we've imposed upon them. And those plants have escaped from gardens. And they don't have any checks and balances in their, in this part of the world, that they're running rampant in and they collapse ecosystems everywhere, because nothing else can survivor and then because they're so successful, I know.

Lian Brook-Tyler  46:38

This is a huge Rhododendron bush. There's like a natural woodland just up the road. For me, there's like huge rhododendrons just like completely taken over, like, it's quite shocking to see. But really, I think on a it's kind of like an exaggerated version of what's happening at a mini level in so many gardens isn't it.

Mary Reynolds 46:59

yet. And rhododendrons. You know, it creates, it poisons the, the bees that go to take, you know, to go to feed from them. And you know, they're one of the major problems of ecosystem collapse in Ireland, Rhododendron pond, they've taken over completely in large parts of West of Ireland, and even here near the east of Ireland where I live, and which plant produces over a million seeds, like, you know, and they, they're so successful that they, they drown out everything else that comes underneath them, you know, it just, it just sorry, they drown out are they drown out any life or light underneath them. You know? So basically, it's a totally different world, when those non native invasive take over. And so without the native plant communities, the whole system collapses, and there's no, there's no, there's no support there for wildlife to live. So, you know, the world can become one big garden, or it can become a sanctuary for life. And so we need to take all those creatures out. And it's tough work, because they're all sentient beings, like, but they have to be removed. You know, it just has to be done. You know, easily just gently, you know, yeah, it's hard. It's hard work. And it's hard work to do on large pieces of land, but you can do it in the small patches of the planet that we look after ourselves. So you can manage it, you can manage it without chemicals, preferably, you know, just, you know, if you can,

Lian Brook-Tyler  48:48

Wonderful. One last thing that was, again, one of those really simple things, but it was just like, Oh, of course, when I, when I saw it in the book was allowing, you know, places that small animals can get from kind of outside of the garden into the garden or from one garden to another, and kind of creating, you know, spaces at the bottom of fences. I kind of went and had a look immediately after I was like, Oh, actually, thankfully, there are quite a few spaces like that. But it's it's something that just hadn't occurred to me before that. So is there anything you'd like to say particularly on that?

Mary Reynolds  49:24

Sure. connectivity between Arks is really important. I mean, right now, we can't do anything about roads. Eventually, when when I think we'll be looking back in five years time wondering why we didn't throw out the rulebook. And I think we'll start to retrospectively, I think cars will become less of an issue because I think people are going to have to return to living locally and I don't mean in those weird 15 minutes cities I mean, living locally, and having a public transport system, which actually allows us to go anywhere we want, but but at the moment people have to have cars you know, because couldn't get anywhere without them generally. And I think we're I think, but within gardens and arcs, what we need to do is open up the boundaries and replace walls with living hedges. And if you can't take down walls tend to create little tunnels underneath them safely, or create little gaps and fences to allow creatures to pasture because their territories are massive, like, you know, they're not these Titanic, they don't just live here, they live, like a hedgehog as a 10 acre territory, you know, just consider the territories that they have to have and and try and connect, you know, connect with your neighbors and explain to them what you're doing. And generally, they won't have a problem with you creating the tiny little gap. You know, it only needs to be a CD case size for a hedgehog, or, you know, whatever, it's just just to understand that, you know, we, we don't own this earth, we don't own these patches of the Earth, it's kind of a funny concept, the fact that we think we own anything really, you know, we're only here for a moment, literally, she breathes in, we're born, she breathes out we die, you know, that's, we're only here for a moment like, but the way the system that we live in, you know, each patch of land has has an owner as such. And so that means you've got, you've got, you can protect it. And you can try and create connections from there to other places which are being protected. And then very important parts of the process. That's it. Thanks for having me, Lian.

Lian Brook-Tyler  51:36

Oh, thank you so much. This has been, yeah, just, I'm so happy to be able to have this conversation and share it with listeners, because I think there's, again, this is something we can actually do. But it does make a difference. So where can listeners find out more about you and your book and your website and all your wonderful work? What's the best place for them to go?

Mary Reynolds 51:58

Yeah, sure. You can go to wearetheark.org or marymary.ie married at IE. But loads of loads of places out there. Really just Google it. There's an awful lot of it. There's a Facebook group of people around that media, medium, whatever we call it, called We Are the Ark, and it's filled with people all over the world and they're brilliant at giving advice. But that would be that would be great. One way of doing it and then yeah, that's that's what I would suggest. Thank you so much, Lian.

Lian Brook-Tyler  52:31

Wonderful. Thank you so much for everything you do. I really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.  Oh, wow. I love that here are our takeaways, Arking is something tangible and accessible that we can all do in some way, rather than waiting for someone or something else to create the solution. And if enough of us doing it, it could create a tipping point in consciousness. As we support the land to heal it will provide a reflection of and support our own healing ways that are truly magical. We can begin small and simply by stopping the use of chemicals, creating small passageways between our garden and surrounding land, turning land back to nature, removing non native species and watching and waiting. If you'd like to get the notes and links for everything we spoke about this week. And as I said, I thoroughly recommend Mary's book hop on over to the show notes at wakingthewild.com/podcast/416 to get the world wonder guide to your hearts deepest longings, hop on over to wakingthewild.com/wolfpack now and you'll get your mitts on it right away. If you don't want to miss out on next week's episode, head on over to Apple podcast stitcher or your app of choice and hit that subscribe button. That way you'll get each episode delivered straight to your device automagically as soon as it comes out. Thank you so much for listening. You've been wonderful. Catch you again next wild Wednesday.

We’ve been on the air for 7 years and have a treasure trove of over 400 episodes! Dive in…

 THE BE MYTHICAL PODCAST

With hundreds of episodes to choose from, illuminating your path with myth, magic, archetypes, and practical ways to thrive in this crazy modern world. Subscribe to our free weekly podcast ranked in the 1.5% most popular shows in the world!