Nasturtiums Too Proud For Their Boots

Just as nasturtiums have a special place in the heart for some while others think they are merely weeds, verge gardens can trigger both positive and negative emotions. How do you bridge that gap?

First, a shoutout to Jo for her comment on this Facebook post about environmental weeds last week “Really tricky to talk about this with some folks because there's an emotional attachment to the green things that are invasive or of concern. But worth modelling the local native species so that people can see the alternative. You don't know what you don't know”

The Verge Visit

Then on Saturday, at Jenny’s verge visit, someone asked what I think of having nasturtiums on a verge. There was a patch of nasturtiums amid the hundreds of predominantly local native plants. Well…

There is a large group of Australians of a certain age for whom nasturtiums have a special place in their heart. I am one of them. And so was Jane.

A 1960’s school reader had a story called The Nasturtiums who were too proud for their Boots where Ben, the cobbler, planted some nasturtium seeds in some old boots either side of the front door of his cottage. Well, those nasturtiums didn’t like their old holey boots and so grew quickly away from them, climbed up the wall, and covered the roof. One day, the red and yellow and orange flowers in the sunlight caught the eye of a baker in the nearby village. “Ben’s cottage is on fire,” he shouted. And all the villagers ran up the hill to the cottage with their buckets filled with water to put out the fire. (for a trip down memory lane click here and scroll down to see some pages of the original book)

I don’t think the 5-year-old me had ever seen a nasturtium but that simple story stuck and has influenced my gardening and writing more than many worthy adult books since. It had everything: borrowed landscapes, vivid imagery, drama, emotion, groupthink, collaboration, and even a happy ending.

What’s This Got To Do With Verges and Advocacy?

In verge gardens for advocacy workshops, we go through all the users and uses of the space to understand how many people are involved and why their opinion of verge gardening can be very different to ours. Each person’s response is based on their individual experiences, circumstances, and intrinsic values.

That’s the first step in advocacy: instead of dismissing people as being wrong or unreasonable, you work out what emotions might be behind their negativity or rejection of what you see as a very sensible and important proposition.

What happens when someone tells me that my non-native nasturtiums are environmental weeds and I should get rid of them?

I could take an oppositional stance and simply reject what they are saying which could earn me the label of being a weed denier.

The other extreme, much preferred by many advocates and campaigners, is that I respond by accepting their argument and follow the action they suggest - and set to, ripping out every offending nasturtium immediately.

Or I could take a more negotiated view, accept their facts but not what they are telling me to do; and justify my actions saying: yes I know, but they are good for the bees, they keep the (other) weeds down, and I keep them contained inside the garden. I tend to see nasturtiums as green manure, easy to pull out and decompose - and yes, they do keep other more troublesome weeds down until I have time to deal with them.

But there’s another step, one that I touch on briefly in Understanding the Space in the article on vandalism. That is self-reflection and recognising the emotions that underpin our own responses.

We humans are all emotional beings, including those of us who prefer to think of ourselves as scientific and logical. We might temper or hide those emotions as we gain better understanding through experience or education, but let’s not kid ourselves that they aren’t there influencing our decisions.

When we can do this dance, moderating and negotiating our responses depending on the context and circumstances, shifting towards a shared outcome, we have a chance at collaborating with diverse participants to tackle complex problems.

Verges as Classrooms for Advocacy

Because the verge is a common space where so many viewpoints and purposes come crashing together, it is an excellent place to learn and practice these communication and collaboration skills.

If greening our cities with street trees and native verge gardens to reduce urban heat and increase biodiversity seems like a no-brainer, remember that if there are 100 residents in your street, you will have 100 different viewpoints about what the street should look and feel like. And then you add the others: the visitors, the workers, the people we spoke of last week trying to increase tree canopy in our cities.

Just as nasturtiums have a special place in the heart for some of us but not others, many aspects of verges trigger emotions. How do you feel about manicured lawns, tidiness, uniformity, hedges, trees, the sound of mowers and other equipment, the smell of freshly cut grass? It’s often hidden below the surface of everyday life until someone does something out of the ordinary or unwittingly stirs a memory.

We discover these differences in conversations, through asking and answering questions and through careful listening. The place sets the stage and shapes the conversations. Verge visits are about much more than information about policies and plants.

Your Influences?

What stories or experiences have shaped the way you see plants, or gardens, or streets?

What stories and experiences are shaping the way this generation of children might see nature and plants and their neighbourhoods?

Let us all know what you think in the comments below.

For paid subscribers, if you’d like to talk more about this article, and how you deal with these frictions, please register for the next zoom catch-up.