the 4-fold yield of language gardens | 061🥏
towards an integrated, experiential-learning community environment.
How can we create public spaces that match our most crucial needs?
When facing interlocking crises and a planet turned into a pressure cooker, we need to look for intervention points of maximum leverage.
Language gardens - cooperative sites at the intersection of permaculture practice and language-learning — offer a 4-fold yield to any community that builds & animates them, increasing connection, health, and resiliency.1
I. Fresh Food
Cooperative language gardens (CLGs) provide a yield of fresh, nutritious food to their local communities, cutting down on fossil fuel emissions from transportation and delivering a higher-quality product to the people.
This yield can grow stronger every year if the community employs the principles of permaculture and works to regenerate the health of the soil.
This process captures carbon in the soil and leads directly to more nutritious food for people. The project becomes a life-long, collective endeavor to pass on beauty and abundance to our children — and the work equips us with knowledge.
II. Local Agency
CLGs provide a transformative yield in the form of increasing local agency. All who participate in the garden can learn the fundamentals of growing vegetables, herbs, and medicinal plants in their region - knowledge that can be applied back home.
The Permaculture Lens
Building on the foundation of permaculture, such gardens would teach a way of living rooted in systems thinking, natural patterns, and functional design.
The principles of permaculture2 are not exclusive to agricultural practices, but rather are deeply practical foundations of a solutions-oriented world lens.
As such, they can be used to design ecologically sound, multifunctional, edible landscapes even within urban architecture.
The net result of establishing such a project is a rich hub of daily connection and cultivation producing nutrient-dense foods for the community, and an ever-growing constellation of citizens who can grow food at home.
III. Physical Community
So far, we’ve focused on what CLGs can give — but the third yield stems directly from what they take. Any form of garden requires consistent effort over time. The cost of labor is high alone, but that can be divided by many hands and basic organization.
CLGs create a space to return to.
There is a common purpose (furthering the health & vitality of the garden/community) and direct benefit (personal connection, health benefits of being outside & working with soil, and a share of the harvest).
Cooperative gardens are an example of effective mutual aid — and they can become even more empowering.
IV. Language Exchange
Thanks to the three yields listed above, CLGs are a natural container for the cultivation and practice of language exchange. Just like gardens, learning a language requires consistent effort over time.
Rather than fitting online classes into a busy schedule, people can learn through action and practice in the field with a whole range of ages and backgrounds.
The language learned through such experience would be real, functional, and practical.
Micro-lessons
The natural process of language-learning in the garden can be supplemented with concise, intentional micro-lessons. Something as simple as adding a chalkboard and sitting space to the garden would create a canvas for daily lessons, which could be used to present target language in digestible, clear bites.
A rotation of volunteers could offer multiple mini-lessons a day, with open practice then stretching throughout the garden.
Functional Language & Signage
A fast-track to developing multilingual competency in the garden could stem from identifying the core vocabulary of the garden (actions, plant names, tools, ect) and building creative signage in all target languages throughout.
Communities could also write / record short stories or meditations within and around the garden, honoring local hero’s and expressing the spirit of the neighborhood. These activities would transform it from a regular garden to a cultural attraction — a sacred space.
Simply by immersing in this space time and time again, one would connect more deeply to the people around them — and gain new language patterns.
V: Conclusion - An Integrated Need System
To recap: Someone showing up at a cooperative language garden reaps the following yields:
a share of fresh, nutritious food
hands-on growing & design experience
daily connection, belonging, & community action
a space for daily language practice (targeted & open)
While a standard class may be inaccessible due to time constraints or childcare, the language garden offers a sanctuary throughout the day that is open to people of all ages and backgrounds.
Play structures could be established in / surrounding the gardens, and children could learn both language + gardening even as they play.
Older residents could find community, engagement, and purpose in gardening, teaching, and creating a safe space for people to enjoy.
The potential for partnership with local business, non-profits, food kitchens, and libraries are limitless.
All told, city governments and towns could not find a better leverage point than cooperative language gardens to invest in the well-being and resilience of their citizens.
It only requires us to look at our homes with a new lens and ask: How can we co-design this space for life to thrive?
“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing up crops but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” — Masanobu Fukuoka
Resilience can be defined as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and re-organize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.
the 12 principles of permaculture design