Philosophy in the veg patch – gardening as revolutionary metabolic repair – 3 part series with Paul Chaney
30 July - 13 August 2017
Philosophy in the veg patch – gardening as revolutionary metabolic repair: 3 part series with Paul Chaney
Sundays 30 July, 6 August and 13 August
11am – 3pm with lunch available (but not included) from Dominic Bailey in the garden from 12:30 – 1:30 (6 & 13 August only).
Free of charge – but booking essential. Call Kestle Barton on 01326 231811
This short course and open discussion series spread over three consecutive Sundays will explore the geo-philosophical and socio-political implications of the gardening act in the age of post-humanism and the Anthropocene. Starting with John Bellamy Foster’s analysis of Marx’s notion of ‘metabolic rift’, we will look at the origins of agriculture and the legacy of farming practices developed in the fertile crescent, the geophilosophical background to plant nutrition, the solar economics of Georges Bataille, and Timothy Morton’s concepts of dark ecology and enmeshment in an effort to develop a philosophically rationalist approach to gardening and self-sufficiency.
Each day will be composed of a theory session in the morning with informal discussion over lunch, followed by a workshop session in the afternoon to begin collaboratively designing a perennial forest garden for Kestle Barton.
On Sunday 13 August Simon Miles will join Paul Chaney for the session. Simon Miles NCH RHS MH has over thirty years experience in horticulture. For fourteen of those years, he ran his local district council’s parks department. His experience was developed as a landscaper and arboreal contractor, and consultant. Simon now runs ‘The Forest Garden’ – a 3.28 acre experimental forest garden at Budock Water near Falmouth.
Simon will introduce the principles of forest gardening and give a live ‘site consultancy’ where he will look in detail at the possibility of developing a community forest garden at Kestle. Participants will have the opportunity to ask any questions of their own, and work collaboratively on developing a forest garden design suitable for the Kestle site.
We advise participants to attend the whole course, but it will be perfectly possible to drop in and pick up the thread from the previous sessions.
