The Paradox of Garden Centres
Walk into any garden centre in the UK and you’re greeted with an abundance of flourishing. Whether it’s the beauty of diverse plants blooming together, or the invitation to welcome more of this abundance into your own garden by purchasing “great pollinator plants”, “bug hotels”, “organic bird seed” and a plethora of other welcome invitations to support a healthy garden.
Then walk around the corner, and on the opposite shelves you'll find “Weed killer”, “Pest Control” and “Plastic lawns”: products to help us ‘control’ our gardens and keep them “nice and healthy”.
We are living in contradiction with (in this case) a story of abundant gardens being completely at odds with a story encouraging us to kill everything within it in order to create a healthy garden, as the pesticides in those bottles of weed-killer will simply kill off all of the pollinators we’re nurturing with our ‘bee-friendly blooms’. This in turn will starve the birds and remove the foundations in the soil that allow a garden to be abundant. And let's not get started on plastic lawns...
The Garden Centre Paradox is a metaphor for what is happening across the world right now.
On the one hand, we’re being actively encouraged to 'go green', 'build community'; 'support our wellbeing', whilst on the other hand being forced to live in systems which contradict the possibility of any of this being able to happen. In most cases, the systems we are living in actually prevent these flourishing spaces from emerging.
We’re trying to promote a new ‘rewilding section’ in our metaphorical garden centre but not removing the ‘pest control’ shelves whilst we’re doing this, which makes for a somewhat conflicting experience. We will never be well personally, socially or ecologically whilst the ‘pest control’ shelves remain.
This paradox also makes for a somewhat conflicting world: one that can feel quite exhausting to navigate when focusing time, energy and commitment into building healthier futures, and then recognising that the flourishing you’re trying to enable can never happen because the foundations are still housed in the ‘pest control’ section.
We are living in a time of great shift, a time welcoming us to be more conscious of our actions; call out contradictions and be brave enough to put wellbeing at the heart of all our decisions. Transition is never easy, but it can be a lot easier if we are able to first notice and then call out what is getting in the way and begin to actively, consciously remove the boundaries to a flourishing world.
Here’s some thoughts to muse upon:
🌱 What are you helping to flourish?
🌱What's getting in the way? What are the ‘pest control’ areas in this context?
🌱How could you begin to remove some of these barriers?
Awareness is a powerful step for shifting our story, and keeping our eyes and minds wide open as we wander around our 'garden centres' and notice any toxic zones is an empowering place to start.
#thrivingtogether