On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes speaks with renowned botanist and teacher Robin Wall Kimmerer about her new movement, Plant Baby Plant. While giving a talk a few years back, Kimmerer coined the movement in order to turn people away from the extractive logic of Drill Baby Drill and “raise a garden-gloved middle finger” to the MAGA mantra. Instead, Plant Baby Plant initiates a new cultural story that asks participants to “raise a garden and raise a ruckus.” Kimmerer says that we need to “re-story” our relationship with plants, the land, and the rest of the non-human world. Plant Baby Plant seeks to catalyze restoration projects and revive and re-story the cultural imaginary. Kimmerer says that “the same forces degrading our natural environment are degrading our cultural environment. She wants people to trade the message of individualism we’ve been fed with one of common purpose. Plant Baby Plant promotes people taking direct, physical actions, even small ones like converting your yard into a biodiverse carbon sink with native plants. Kimmerer calls this resistance with shovels and seeds. Yet, small acts aren’t enough. Kimmerer says we need to “raise a ruckus” by contributing to systemic change that moves away from extraction toward reciprocity. This work is urgent, and Kimmerer recommends “slowing down in our imagination and speeding up in our defense of the natural world,” following the example of organizations like The Understory Alliance. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, which has earned Kimmerer wide acclaim. Her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing, and her other work has appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. In 2022, Braiding Sweetgrass was adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith. This new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. Robin’s newest book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (November 2024), is a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world. Featured image of zinnia seedlings via BlueRidgeKitties on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Did you enjoy this story? Your funding makes great, local journalism like this possible. Donate here The post Raise a Garden, Raise a Ruckus with Robin Wall Kimmerer appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.
