Gardens are Four-Dimensional!

I just got this while watching a permaculture lecture--I've had a bias to see elements of gardens as plants, and as static, whereas everything is lways changing and goats/chickens/humans/winds are all a part of it too. Sun's movement. It's an illusion that things are static. A practiced assumption, culturally based.

Very little in a garden is static. Perhaps the stepping stones, or frame of a raised bed. But even these have measurable dynamics as the day, or seasons pass. Heat values and shade patterns are in motion.

Soil is very dynamic. It is comprised of billions of living critters, each one transiting its cycle of life. Consuming, exuding, and replicating itself. Each item in the soil feeds it, and feeds on it. When the soil dies, so does everything that is dependent upon it.

I just got this while watching a permaculture lecture--I've had a bias to see elements of gardens as plants, and as static

It is a great feeling to have a revelation of this nature. Cherish it. Meditate upon it.

There is a very telling ancient Asian saying: The Only Constant Is Change.

Perhaps the stepping stones, or frame of a raised bed.

Even these, for certain, are in a constant flux of change and towards disintegration. I agree. The stones absorb heat, absorb moisture, potentially get ice in them, freeze solid, are broken up by lichen and plant roots, and are thus slowly breaking down to salt the sea. The frame of the raised bed, even if made from pressure treated wood, will absorb moisture, will dry out, will crack, and these cracks will be a micro-climate for microbes and plants, will eventually rot, will break down into soils. Nothing is permanent, at least in the form as you see it now.

I would not really call this Four-Dimensional. In my view this is too limiting. The dimensions come in the form of interactions from so many variables all at once. Multi-dimensional would more likely be a term I would use.

Sure, multi-dimensional indeed! what I was driving at was not just that there are the many dimensions and changes and interactions, but also that the way my mind is conditioned or works or tends to form images of things is static, is three-dimensional, and so gives an inaccurate picture of things. In other words, the habit is very global--it's not something that is only about one aspect of a garden, or even about only gardens, it's about my idea of what "is" is, it's about the whole way my mind has tended to define the concept "garden" or any other concept.

Instead of "ideal forms" there are really "ideal form-ings," instead of "concepts" there are "conceivings." This sounds like academic jargon, but it's a way of saying wow, everything I thing I think I know about my garden is suspect.

And if I catch myself in an illusion some of the time, imagine how much more there is to observe if I really let go of this habit? how many moments of my observing of my garden may have been blocked? what new worlds might this open up?

And if I catch myself in an illusion some of the time, imagine how much more there is to observe if I really let go of this habit? how many moments of my observing of my garden may have been blocked? what new worlds might this open up?

More often than not, though we may think to the contrary, modern humans are predominantly running on subconscious impulses based on assumptions and past experiences rather than on conscious observations of the here and now. This knowing, that is the step that you are describing and are making, is indeed a step beyond the regular 3 dimensional paradigm. This type and level of observation takes a conscious effort to sustain over the long term. It is, in myself and in most people, very much like an atrophied muscle that needs a lot of stimulus and work to build into something that is used automatically.

Have you ever checked out this book: The Secret Life of Plants

Summary[edit]
The book includes summaries of the life and work of 20th century scientists Jagdish Chandra Bose and Corentin Louis Kervran as well as 19th century scientist George Washington Carver. The book also discusses alternative philosophy and practice on soil and soil health, as well as on alternative farming methods. Pseudoscientific topics such as magnetotropism, bio-electrics, aura, psychophysics, orgone energy, radionics, kirlian photography, and dowsing are discussed. One of the book's controversial claims is that plants may be sentient despite their lack of a nervous system and a brain.[3]

The book includes experiments on plant stimuli using a polygraph, a method which was pioneered by Cleve Backster. The book is generally regarded as pseudoscientific by skeptics and scientists.[4][5] Parts of the book attempt to disparage science, particularly plant biology, for example by claiming science is not concerned with "what makes plants live", in order to promote its own viewpoint that plants have emotions. The authors further say the authorities are unable to accept that emotional plants "might originate in a supramaterial world of cosmic beings which, as fairies, elves, gnomes, sylphs, and a host of other creatures, were a matter of direct vision and experience to clairvoyants among the Celts and other sensitives."[4]

Its a great read on many levels. has blown a few minds, for sure!

A concrete example of how this has helped me think more clearly: I've kept thinking that I had to do something to get nitrogen in the soil. But I failed to think about the fact that animals are already putting some in the soil--Snowball, the sparrows, the squirrels, the raccoons that try to steal Snowball's food, the chickadees...they are putting a small amount of poop and pee into the soil, mildly enough concentrated that it's not burning roots, but it's not nothing. And the fact that there are plants that are attractive to them (we get 10x the birds of our neighbors, my housemate has said) is a part of the reason for that, but that's mostly not due to any action on my part, just letting the weeds grow. They seem to find lots and lots of seeds in the hugel bed, not sure what they're finding there, can't still be grains from the cover crop that didn't do so well, but there they are pecking and perching, and the squirrels are always digging through and posing for photo ops.

Also, I was thinking that most of us in the West think about inventing machines--static, repeatable, controllable things--so that might be a clue about what kind of bias will tend to pop up when conceptualizing the garden. When I ask what nature is showing me, so often I become aware of the sound of a bird high up above, the last thing I would have thought to focus on, but that is a part of the garden too.