Sustainability

In one word the sub-title of a Guardian story (to which I was alerted by Lucy Jones, who will be speaking at our garden club meeting in March) sums up much of what underpins my commitment to gardening organically.

I do not doubt that science, research and development have much to offer, after all gardeners have always tinkered about, experimented and sought to build on what nature offers us, but I do not think it is any kind of progress if what we do breaks our relationship of stewardship for the land and responsibility to those who will follow us.

So, the story of Bhutan's commitment to organic production couldn't fail to be of interest to me. In the UK our government at one time talked about measuring happiness, which perhaps shows that at least someone was thinking outside the usual box, but Bhutan has gone much further, basing its economic development on the pursuit of collective happiness. (Now there's a topic for the political philosophers amongst us; here's one for you conspiracy theorists too - when I originally miss-typed "amongst" the browser's in-built spell checker offered Monsanto as an alternative.)

The full story of Bhutan's commitment is told here in The Guardian's article - enjoy.