Nick Routledge@nick_routledge
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RT @nick_routledge: @Plough 10/ Perennially-based food forests, small and large, already play a pivotal role in justice-based regenerative design. What then, defines the eco-cultural bridge between 'ecologically significant refuge' and 'sacred grove'; in Tamil, kōyilkā ṭu or 'temple-forest'? Consciousness?

Copy of tweet here: Here, a portrait of Kingdom dynamics tabernacling in a regenerative design project addressing the desolation and destitution of human community and landscape, in the same breath - the solidarity of social and planetary renewal, the simultaneity of human and earthly resurrection. — Image of tweet and quote tweet here: – Quote tweet: “It is a blunt truth: homeless women have no access to places both safe and beautiful. Imagine that.” So, we established an orchard-garden sanctuary into a devastated, former-heavy-industrial-use site, across from the Women’s Mission, in Eugene, OR. @OrchardNotes Plus four images of the transformation.
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Copy of tweet here: Here, a portrait of Kingdom dynamics tabernacling in a regenerative design project addressing the desolation and destitution of human community and landscape, in the same breath - the solidarity of social and planetary renewal, the simultaneity of human and earthly resurrection. — Image of tweet and quote tweet here: – Quote tweet: “It is a blunt truth: homeless women have no access to places both safe and beautiful. Imagine that.” So, we established an orchard-garden sanctuary into a devastated, former-heavy-industrial-use site, across from the Women’s Mission, in Eugene, OR. @OrchardNotes Plus four images of the transformation.

Initially, of course, our new ‘garden’ – a devastated industrial site, formerly a Texaco oil storage facility, and empty but for a primitive shelter set aside for smokers – presented immense horticultural challenges. Indeed, the ‘soil’ of our new garden comprised almost two feet of gravel compacted by decades of heavy industrial use, interspersed with plentiful, immense, 18” thick concrete slabs, once used as foundations for supersized oil holding-tanks, just like the ones still in use by the business next door. Ron, the first concrete-cutting specialist we invited to consult with us, dug a hole: ‘Wow,’ he said, ‘That’s some concrete you’ve got there,’ and advised us to ‘speak to the folks who take out dams.’ [Image of featureless industrial lot] We did, confirming that the costs and logistics associated with returning the site to a somewhat naturalized foundation to work with, was simply impractical. What to do, then? How to grow a garden in a context as tough as it gets?
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Initially, of course, our new ‘garden’ – a devastated industrial site, formerly a Texaco oil storage facility, and empty but for a primitive shelter set aside for smokers – presented immense horticultural challenges. Indeed, the ‘soil’ of our new garden comprised almost two feet of gravel compacted by decades of heavy industrial use, interspersed with plentiful, immense, 18” thick concrete slabs, once used as foundations for supersized oil holding-tanks, just like the ones still in use by the business next door. Ron, the first concrete-cutting specialist we invited to consult with us, dug a hole: ‘Wow,’ he said, ‘That’s some concrete you’ve got there,’ and advised us to ‘speak to the folks who take out dams.’ [Image of featureless industrial lot] We did, confirming that the costs and logistics associated with returning the site to a somewhat naturalized foundation to work with, was simply impractical. What to do, then? How to grow a garden in a context as tough as it gets?

Copy of: · I’m feeling deeply fed by yesterday’s prop fair, not least by grafting trees with Ann B, who came to the fair to pick up trees on behalf of the Cottage Village, a new, permanent tiny-home, ‘eco-village’ for low-income residents she now calls home. This project has been established by ‘Grovers’ seeking practical, grounded, humane, permanent solutions to homelessness in their community. I was greatly struck by the quality of the scion choices, and conversation, Ann brought to the grafting table. Frankly, her no-nonsense clarity about the nature and significance of things, echo a soul wisdom I commonly encounter among low-income folk. Yup, it rarely gets better than grafting world-class material for a worthy ambassador to an eco-social design project so clearly representing the finest that visionary, civil society has to offer. Nice one, team.
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Copy of: · I’m feeling deeply fed by yesterday’s prop fair, not least by grafting trees with Ann B, who came to the fair to pick up trees on behalf of the Cottage Village, a new, permanent tiny-home, ‘eco-village’ for low-income residents she now calls home. This project has been established by ‘Grovers’ seeking practical, grounded, humane, permanent solutions to homelessness in their community. I was greatly struck by the quality of the scion choices, and conversation, Ann brought to the grafting table. Frankly, her no-nonsense clarity about the nature and significance of things, echo a soul wisdom I commonly encounter among low-income folk. Yup, it rarely gets better than grafting world-class material for a worthy ambassador to an eco-social design project so clearly representing the finest that visionary, civil society has to offer. Nice one, team.

Copy of: My toughest planting yet. An extremely resilient apple variety grafted onto our most powerful rootstock, situated into the assembly area at the front of the Eugene Mission's Men's Center. Four years ago, I pick-axed a hole straight down through deep gravel to plant it. There's not a speck of greenery elsewhere within this large, brutalist cage that has hundreds of people passing through it, every day of the year. I have barely tended to it. This tree is sustained by homeless men, of their own care and volition, passing through. Its growth has been slow (as expected, given its challenging context) but steady and healthy. Nick, my namesake here, makes a point of sitting with it whenever he visits. Another hidden sage upon the streets. We talk Herman Hesse: "My soul turns into a tree." Common prejudice to the contrary, no matter how tough the circumstances, the houseless consistently care for plants I put in...
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Copy of: My toughest planting yet. An extremely resilient apple variety grafted onto our most powerful rootstock, situated into the assembly area at the front of the Eugene Mission's Men's Center. Four years ago, I pick-axed a hole straight down through deep gravel to plant it. There's not a speck of greenery elsewhere within this large, brutalist cage that has hundreds of people passing through it, every day of the year. I have barely tended to it. This tree is sustained by homeless men, of their own care and volition, passing through. Its growth has been slow (as expected, given its challenging context) but steady and healthy. Nick, my namesake here, makes a point of sitting with it whenever he visits. Another hidden sage upon the streets. We talk Herman Hesse: "My soul turns into a tree." Common prejudice to the contrary, no matter how tough the circumstances, the houseless consistently care for plants I put in...